Repairman Jack

Repairman Jack is a societal drop-out anti-hero created by F. Paul Wilson.

A personal tragedy set him on a trail of revenge when he realizes that the police, and the “system” will never punish those responsible. He finds he has a knack for repairing these kinds of injustices drops out of society and goes into business as Repairman Jack.

Jack has no social security number, he doesn’t pay taxes or have a bank account in his own name. He survives through identity theft. He makes his money by helping people who are unable to get help from the police or the legal system. In typical anti-hero form, Jack breaks laws and commits crimes in his efforts to help his customers regain some justice. He believes strongly in the right to live his life according to his rules, and that others can live their life however they want as long as they aren’t infringing on others. His strong personal moral code makes him admirable, desirable as an ally, fearsome as an enemy.

It’s interesting to see how a person can live off the grid of officialdom inside a metropolitan city. It doesn’t happen without a lot of skills and contacts and requires a great willingness to color outside the lines. To make most of his “repairs” Jack creates or manipulates situations where the wrong doer is often undone by their own vices. Key to Jack’s success is his anonymity. Jack aspires to fade into the crowd and stay outside the system.

As the series progresses, books begin to focus on a Lovecraftian underworld’s battle of evil vs. ambivalent. The evil force is called the Otherness and the ambivalent force the Ally. In one novel (I will omit the title to reduce the spoiler effect) Jack is told that there will no longer be any coincidences for him regarding to do with this battle. I think the fact that Jack is a pawn in this battle helps is a nice foil to the fact that Jack is a master manipulator when it comes to his fix-it jobs.

The fix-its remind me a lot of the con-games in the TV show Leverage and Human Target but are much darker and more violent. But the elements of the bad-guy who is really a good guy, and the satisfaction of seeing the really bad guys brought down is the same.

So far, I like the mythos and how Wilson is creating links between the Repairman Jack series and his Adversary series. Brilliant way to get people reading your backlist!