The Haunted Air (Repairman Jack Series #6) » (Reprint)

F. Paul Wilson, a New York Times bestselling author of horror, adventure, medical thrillers, science fiction, and virtually everything in between, is a practicing physician who resides in Wall, New Jersey.

Jack is back, for 2002. F. Paul Wilson's engaging, self-employed, off-the-books fixer, Repairman Jack, returns for another intense, action-packed adventure just a little over the border into the weird, in The Haunted Air. First introduced years ago in the bestseller The Tomb, Jack has been the hero of a series of exciting novels set in and around New York City including Legacies, Conspiracies, All the Rage, and Hosts. "Repairman Jack is a wonderful character, ultracompetent but still vulnerable. Wilson strolls into X-Files territory and makes it his own, keeping the action brisk and the level of suspense steadily rising," said the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle.

In Astoria, Queens, the lively ethnic neighborhood just across the river from Manhattan, a house is being haunted by the ghost of a nine-year-old girl in riding clothes. More than two decades before, she'd been abducted from stables in Brooklyn. Now it's up to Jack to uncover the truth of her story and liberate the pretty, blond spirit. Perhaps the answer is in the odd little store called the Shurio Coppe? Ah, but that would be telling.

Jack does things no human being should be able to do, but we watch, in horrified fascination, as the forces of evil seem about to triumph and fill the world with eternal darkness. And then— but you must read the book.

Publishers Weekly

This sixth novel in Wilson's gutsy Repairman Jack series (after Hosts) teams the righteous urban mercenary with his strangest bedfellows yet: a pair of sham spirit mediums who openly operate their occult con game out of a brownstone in Queens. His hardboiled skepticism notwithstanding, Jack takes the case of brothers Lyle and Charlie Kenton, who've been threatened by other Big Apple pseudo-psychics for horning in on the lucrative seance scene. No sooner has Jack begun using the tricks of the spiritualist trade on the Kentons' persecutors than real ghosts begin popping up along with a secret cult of ritual child murderers. As though this weren't enough, Jack is also confronted with imminent and unexpected fatherhood, which may force him to forsake the anonymity crucial to his underground enterprises. Readers know they can count on Wilson to weave the most unruly narrative strands into a tight Gordian plot and he doesn't disappoint here. Though heavy with talk and weak attempts at hip-hop jargon, the tale still speeds briskly to its spooky climax, subtly referencing other books in Wilson's canon (notably The Keep) and developing Jack's role as a warrior against the malignant cosmic force he calls "the Otherness." Above all, the novel enhances the enigma of Jack, a hero who commands respect despite his curmudgeonly disdain for contemporary culture, his morally ambiguous work-for-hire ethic and his unsettling appeal to the vigilante in every reader. (Dec. 4) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.