Repairman Jack
The Repairman Jack novels are a series spun off from the Nightworld novels (AKA the Adversary Cycle) by F. Paul Wilson.
From The Other Wiki:
Repairman Jack is a self-titled "fix-it" man, but not in the common workshop sense. He is something of an underground mercenary, hired by everyday people to fix situations that cannot be dealt with through legal means (e.g.: blackmail). He is careful about whom he agrees to do fix-its for, preferring innocent, desperate citizens being victimized with no one else to turn to. These fix-its usually begin simply, but grow into complex problems that begin to involve more and more sci-fi & supernatural elements as the novels continue. The second novel, Legacies, is the only one that is completely free of any overtly supernatural elements.
All of Jack's fix-its are immediately relevant problems in today's world, covering topics such as conspiracy groups, grassroots movements, designer drugs, public shootings, terrorists, legal dealings and scientific & biological experiments. Jack relies on his brain, wits, experience and real-life weapons and techniques to do battle, and though he makes increasing use of supernatural sources of information (a spiritual medium, an indestructible tome of unknown age), he has so far not used supernatural weapons or abilities in battle.
Jack hides his identity from the government by not voting, paying taxes, opening bank accounts, registering guns or cars, or doing anything else that will leave a paper or electronic trail. He uses a TracFone to leave untraceable calls, demands cash only for payment, and stashes his savings in gold coins in his apartment. He consistently wears gloves or wipes surfaces in order not to leave behind traces of his identity. He advertises his services strictly by word of mouth and via an anonymous website.
Repairman Jack has appeared in the following novels:
- The Tomb
- Legacies
- Conspiracies
- All the Rage
- Hosts
- The Haunted Air
- Gateways
- Crisscross
- Infernal
- Harbingers
- Bloodline
- By the Sword
- Ground Zero
- Fatal Error
- The Dark At The End
- Nightworld
Three Young Adult novels also star Jack as well... a Young Adult.
- Jack: Secret Histories
- Jack: Secret Vengeance
- Jack: Secret Circles
- Air Vent Passageway: Used in Legacies.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: the Ladies
- Anti-Hero: Jack
- The Antichrist: Rasalom, and possibly the unborn child from Bloodline.
- Anyone Can Die
- Author Avatar: Parodied.
- And then some!
Jack: "Your books are super." He saw Winslow swell with delight. Authors were so needy.
- Badass Normal: Jack
- The Bartender: Julio
- Berserk Button: Hurt or threaten Vicky, and Jack will go animal on your ass, even if you're a nine-foot-tall rakosh.
- Black and Gray Morality: Not for the humans, but for the cosmic forces. The Otherness is undeniably evil, but the Ally is far from good: benevolently indifferent at best.
- Black Eyes of Evil: Averted, Occuli have these but they're not evil. Just really creepy.
- Blackmail: One of the reasons people to go Jack for help.
- Body Horror: People conceived or growing up too close to certain nexus points get "touched" by the Otherness and end up mutated to varying degrees.
- Ah, yes. The "Monroe Cluster"... Picture if you will: A man with tentacles for legs. A woman with a single fused finger on her left hand - and one fused nail. Which later turned into a claw.
- Fatal Error reveals that these are not mutations but reactivated genes. In ancient times, the Otherness made war on humanity by altering humans into "q'qrs" - six-limbed living weapons that later ages would remember as "demons". The Ally retaliated by releasing a biological weapon that killed all the females of the species. In desperation, the males went on a rape spree, hoping to restore their ranks with Half Human Hybrids. They were unsuccessful in producing further q'qrs, but a lot of that genetic material remains in the human genome as recessive genes. Dawn Pickering's baby, the result of both sibling and Parental Incest to reinforce those genes to dominance - is a freaking demon!
- Ah, yes. The "Monroe Cluster"... Picture if you will: A man with tentacles for legs. A woman with a single fused finger on her left hand - and one fused nail. Which later turned into a claw.
- Buried Alive
- Bury Your Gays: Jeannette and Kate
- The Call Knows Where You Live: Does it ever. At least it can be bargained with...
- Chekhov's Gunman
- The Chosen One: It's revealed that Jack is actually the backup chosen one, should the current chosen one die. He doesn't want to be. It's unknown just how much the Ally has been influencing his life before.
- Church of Happyology
- Combat Pragmatist: Jack goes out of his way to point out that he isn't particularly good at fighting and that real fights are nothing like what is seen in the movies. As such he is quite possibly the most creative fighter this side of Rorschach in terms of improvising to get an advantage over his opponents.
- Arguably more so, simply due to sheer creativity. Jack once drove off an entire gang in just minutes thus; he squirted stage blood mixed with pepper spray in an attacker's eye, then stuck a rubber eye in his mouth - result: eight no-longer-tough guys screaming OH MY GOD THIS PSYCHO JUST RIPPED OUT MY BUDDY'S EYE AND ATE IT!
- Con Man: Some of Jack's targets and several of his friends are this.
- Conspiracy Theorist: A whole bunch of them in, appropriately, Conspiracies. They even had their own convention. Also Weezy and Harris in Ground Zero
- Cool Big Sis: Kate
- Cosmic Horror: the Otherness
- Cosmic Plaything
- Creepy Child: Tara Portman
- Creepy Twins: the (MIB) Twins.
- Death By Pragmatism: Subverted
- Distress Call: Conspiracies begins with one of these asking for Jack.
- Damsel in Distress: Vicki, a few times.
- Hey! She's not even ten!
- Eldritch Abomination: the Rakoshi
- Evil-Detecting Dog: every dog a Lady has
- Executive Meddling: there is no tomb in The Tomb. The publisher insisted on the title.
- Eye Scream: Jack keeps his thumbnails long just for this advantage in a fight. He also stabs a fork through a man's eye.
- You mean through his eye socket. Fork lobotomy!
- Cold Sniper: Jack's father
- The End of the World as We Know It: Nightfall.
- Framing the Guilty Party: Several times.
- Gangsta Style: Subverted. A thug tries aiming this way at Jack, who points out what's wrong with that grip. In a painful object lesson.
- Good Is Not Nice: In Wilson's 'verse there's a specific gene set which increases violent impulses - Jack is the most potent carrier on record; IE, he once tied a man who seduced and impregnated his own unknowing daughter under a truck. At the moment he justified the modernized "draw and quartering" as a kill method which left no trace evidence, but after what was left of the body was identified by DNA testing just a day later, he realized he was just that violently angry. Even he asks himself What the Hell, Hero?.
- Half-Human Hybrid: In The Tomb.
- Human Resources
- Hive Mind: The Unity
- I Did What I Had to Do: Miller
- Immortality
- Insignificant Little Blue Planet: Earth isn't even a prize in the fight between the Ally and the Otherness. It's a single poker chip at best.
- Karmic Death
- Killer Rabbit: Oyv the (apparent) chihuahua
- Killer Space Monkey: Mauricio
- Knight Templar: The Yeniceri
- Last of His Kind: The last rakosh, and the Mother before it.
- Light Is Not Good: It is stressed that the Ally does NOT care much about mankind.
- Mama Bear: Gia
- The Men in Black: the Twins, the Yeni çeri
- Mugging the Monster:
- Jack sometimes wanders at night, dressed like a tourist, waiting for someone evil and stupid enough to attempt to mug him. Then Jack beats the would-be mugger up, takes his money and jewelery, fences the jewelery, and donates the money to a kids' baseball league.
- Two bandits and later a mugger try to attack Glaeken. The mugger (probably) survives. The bandits are not so lucky.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: The q'qrs, Otherness's living weapons, were four-armed - and, presumably, very dangerous.
- Never Found the Body
- Nikola Tesla: Some of his inventions are central to Conspiracies.
- The Nondescript: Jack works at being this, and also deliberately subverts it when he's undercover so his fake personas will be markedly unlike his real appearance.
- No Name Given: Jack is just Jack, which makes people uncomfortable addressing him so familiarly.
- Non-Indicative Name: There is no tomb in The Tomb.
- Phony Psychic: The Kenton brothers and the Fosters from The Haunted Air.
- Protectorate: Don't mess with Gia or Vicky.
- Properly Paranoid
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Kusum and Kolabati have been around since the 1800's. Glaeken has been around much longer than that.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Harbingers.
- Sacrificial Lion
- Scars Are Forever: Jack gets horrible scars from the Rakoshi. At one point they glow in the dark.
- And certain people can see them right through his shirt.
- Significant Anagram: Rasalom loves using anagrams of his name.
- Significant Monogram: F. Paul Wilson in Bloodline.
- Speak of the Devil: Rasalom knows exactly when and where someone says his name. People don't say it to avoid him knowing where they are.
- Storming the Castle
- Time Abyss: Glaeken is 14 or 15 thousand years old. Rasalom is several years older.
- The Powers That Be: The Ally
- To the Pain: From Gia, of all people, when a reporter asks her what fate is appropriate for serial child molesters.
- Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Compendium of Srem, which helpfully translates itself into the reader's native language. Then it stops being helpful.
- To white hats at least...
- The Trickster: Given a choice he'd rather use his wits than force to solve a problem and he has a somewhat twisted sense of humor.
- Ultimate Evil: the Otherness.
- The Virus: The Unity.
- We Help the Helpless
- White-Haired Pretty Girl: Semelee.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Glaeken doesn't at all. He is overjoyed for a chance to live a human life and to get old together with his beloved.
- Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him: Jack receives an explanation as to why the Otherness doesn't kill him off:
Rasalom: Physical pain is mere sustenance. But, a strong man slowly battered into despair and hopelessness...that is a delicacy. In your case, it might even approach ecstasy. I don't want to deprive myself of that.
- On the other hand if you happen to find yourself on the business end of Jack's gun and he has a quarrel with you... yeah.
- You Kill It, You Bought It: Jack becomes the Heir of the Sentinel after he accidentally kills the Twins.