Infernal

Repairman Jack #9

by F. Paul Wilson

The ninth Repairman Jack novel begins with a tragedy that throws Jack together with his brother Tom, a judge from Philadelphia. They've never been close and Jack, the career criminal, soon finds that he adheres to a higher ethical standard than his brother the judge.
Determined to get to know his brother better, Tom convinces Jack to go on a wild treasure hunt together. Armed only with a map pointing the way to a desolate wreck off the coast of Bermuda, the brothers come across something much stranger, and much more dangerous than mere treasure.

Genres: Horror, Thriller, Urban Fantasy, Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Paranormal

421 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 1, 2005

About the author

Francis Paul Wilson is an author, born in Jersey City, New Jersey. He writes novels and short stories primarily in the science fiction and horror genres. His debut novel was Healer (1976). Wilson is also a part-time practicing family physician. He made his first sales in 1970 to Analog and continued to write science fiction throughout the seventies. In 1981 he ventured into the horror genre with the international bestseller, The Keep, and helped define the field throughout the rest of the decade. In the 1990s he became a true genre hopper, moving from science fiction to horror to medical thrillers and branching into interactive scripting for Disney Interactive and other multimedia companies. He, along with Matthew J. Costello, created and scripted FTL Newsfeed which ran daily on the Sci-Fi Channel from 1992-1996.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/fpaulw...

Reviews

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ooookay, this book just goes to prove that just because you like a series and you like the earlier books in a series you can't count on liking all the books in a series. The 3 is a gift...I can't give 2.5 so I rounded up.

Let's be up front. I like the Repairman Jack series. I've been on a roll reading one after another... Then I got to Infernal. This one bored me stiff, in some ways it all but crashed and burned. Don't get me wrong the story is here. It adds a little more to our knowledge about Jack and ties up some "sort of" loose ends. But it does so so slowly and disjointedly.

Mr. Wilson tends to spool his stories out. They bounce from one point of view to another and slowly grow. This just grew too slowly. By the time we got to the meat of the story (which we'd all figured out long, long, long before Mr. Wilson saw fit to intro it to the actual book I was slightly comatose and pretty much ready for him to just wind things up. Opening with a shot at an emotional trauma...leading us into a maze of family problems for Jack with Gia and Vicky there on the edges ready to be dragged into danger by their relationship with Jack (again) we wander along. Jack is supposed to be doing one thing hunting terrorists but gets drawn into another with all sorts of revelations that I suppose are supposed to make us go..."wow!". But they don't.

We drop backwards in time now and then about 500 years to set up the paranormal part of the story but the book winds out top almost 250 pages before we actually Jack involved in that part of the book.

I finished it and have the details I'm supposed to about Jack...but oh my goodness I hope the next book is back to the standard of the others.

Recommended for fans of the Repairman Jack series who need the details within...you can probably skim quite a bit and still get the story.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Infernal is not my favorite Repairman Jack novel, but still pretty good. There seems to be a pattern developing in the series, one articulated by 'the one' to Jack in the everglades-- I will make you suffer. A few installments ago, Jack finally met up with is sister while doing a job, but that ended in tragedy as she was killed. Then, Jack flew down to Florida after his father had been involved in a hit and run. Jack and his dad did some serious bonding to say the least.

Infernal starts with Jack's dad flying to NYC for a visit; mild spoiler as it happens right away, but Jack's dad is gunned down (along with many others) at the airport by a strange pair of terrorists. Since Jack has no ID, his brother Tom comes up to NYC to claim the body. This is the first time we have meet Tom, and it turns out he is in some serious trouble with the law, even though he is a judge in Philly. Turns out he is a very crooked judge being investigated by the Feds among others. While Jack's dad and sister were really good people, Tom is really not. In fact, Tom is planning on getting a fake ID and skipping, but he needs cash and his assets are frozen by the Feds. Tom does, however, have a stash of cash in Bermuda and cajoles Jack into sailing over there on a 'borrowed' boat to pick it up...

I found this installment a little scattered compared to the others and we were not even treated with any 'fixes'. We do have another lady/dog appearance, but just in passing this time. Yes, Wilson's prose still pulls you along as usual, but this one had a little bit of a placeholder feeling for the series. 3.5 stars rounding up.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars

Infernal, Repairman Jack #9 is another fantastic installment of one of my favorite on going series. F. Paul Wilson has created a special series led by a main character in Jack that always walks the line between good and bad. The Repairman Jack series has developed into one of my favorite series out there and I can never seem to get enough. Wilson does an amazing job at making each book work as a standalone while at the same time never neglecting the overall story arc. We the reader now not only know that each book and story will have a deeper connection, we expect it.

Jack is one of my favorite heroes/anti-hero.

The blending of a blistering fast paced action thriller with a tiny, albeit meaningful supernatural twist, this series is my cup of tea.

In this story Jack is reunited with his father once again. He also spends most this book with his older brother Tom. As far as the overall story goes this was a pretty light one. Of course seriously bad things could befall our hero and his loved ones if Jack doesn't save the day.

This series as a whole is guilty pleasure of mine often making me give it even higher marks. I love the writing, the characters, the action, and the tiny bit of supernatural.

[Joann Erlein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Infernal- Could not put it down

I just finished Infernal and I enjoyed it so much I
was sorry it didn't have more chapters.
I have ordered the next in series and I am excited about starting it. Repairman Jack has became one of my top of the list favourite reads.

[Already Overbooked · Rating 3 out of 5]

I touched its belly button!

[Jadewik · Rating 2 out of 5]

After a devastating event at the airport, Jack needs his brother's help to claim a body. The brotherly reunion doesn't go well as Jack gets suckered into going on an overseas trip to Bermuda where he learns his judicial brother has gotten himself into more than a lot of trouble. Trying to find a solution to his predicament, Tom encourages Jack to help look for buried treasure which leads them to the discovery of a rather unusual artifact that opens up a Pandora's Box of trouble.

I did blow through this book because it's Repairman Jack! ... and I enjoy F. Paul Wilson's writing style and the supernatural elements. But, I didn't like this particular book with respect to the rest of the series. It was too predictable. And I really was annoyed with Jack's brother Tom. Grrrr!

Usually these books have a couple different plot lines that converge, but the sub-plot in this book was more divergent and I had to ask myself "why was this even in here?"... the answer to which I filled in with "maybe it sets things up for the following book?"

While I didn't really care for the book, there were a few things I did enjoy-- the nod to a couple of the previous books "The Haunted Air" and "Crisscross" and "Gateways". So... if you haven't read other books in this series you might not know what's going on if you just jump into this book. I would almost say you could skip it, except for a few main things that happened-- Jack retrieves a particular book we read about in "Crisscross" and we learn about seven artifacts that will potentially have future roles in the Repairman Jack books.

So, while this wasn't up to par with the rest of the series, I believe that it had some events which will contribute to the saga in other Repairman Jack novels.

[Joseph Teller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a less than perfect Repairman Jack novel, primarily because jack was more reactive than proactive and also because the ending of the novel was pretty much telegraphed way too early by the author.

There was a whole lot of character development though, and some connection to previous events in the more recent novels that worked better than has been attempted in the earlier novels.

Imperfect, but still a reasonably good read. I'm sill waiting for some earth shattering concepts to appear, but so far Wilson writes like a Tv series writer, dropping 1 or 2 plot points for the future into the bank each book hoping to lead you onward and that the final closure story will begin to give the sort of bang moment of revelation rather than wander away into mediocrity or go someplace that is impossible to reach with the pieces given.

I'm also getting a bit annoyed with a pregnancy that stretches over, what, 3 Novels to date? 4? With the novels having been published one a year, the pregnant girlfriend plot (and the time passing between novels) is turning into comic-book time pacing.

We shall see... I have one more novel of the series on my shelf (I picked up the first 10 in the series all at once) and if it doesn't get more interesting or develop more detail that will be the last one I read.

Its a pity that I'm getting frustrated, the characters have such potential to be interesting.

[Benjamin Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boy, this series just keeps on rolling along, maintaining consistently high writing, excellent supernatural/mystery plot, and great characters. Jack's brother Tom is the central supporting character this time around and the interaction between the two is very interesting.

Each of these Repairman Jack novels seems to be split between 1) a "fix-it" job which is much like a private eye/crime novel plot and 2) an going supernatural plot that moves slowly along as we learn more and more about what is happening in the background. This time around, the supernatural part takes on a bigger role with the "infernal" and its effect on the story. An intriguing premise that really brings out the character traits of those it impacts. Sorry if that sounds like a vague description of this novel, but I don't want to spoil anything.

Highly recommended, as all of the RJ books, but definitely read them in order.

[Nick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretty bad, on rereading. We get a bunch of nasty fat jokes, some genuinely unhinged anti-Muslim/Arab ranting (most of which comes from one character who's meant to be racist, but our hero also at one point confesses a desire to mow down Arabs in the street in response to a terrorist attack), we get another entry in "woman in a Repairman Jack novel does something dumb and causes problems," and the plot doesn't end up being particularly interesting. A better ending would involve Jack's brother Tom, who has already explained that his view of the law is highly legalistic and prone to abuse, using his ability to manipulate the rules of the cursed artifact to his favor, but the ending we get is a lot dumber than that.

A fairly weak entry in the series.

[Chad · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read the first Repairman Jack novel, The Tomb, years ago. It felt like I read it when I was about sixteen, but it was only published in 1998, so I must have been closer to 25. I remember liking it a fair bit. That was before the events of 9/11, which I think contributed to a substantial change in tone in this book, Infernal.

It's amazing, the level of Gary Stu (masculinization of the concept of a Mary Sue, for those who aren't familiar) feeling I got from the protagonist in this book -- not in overt, blatant ways so much as in little hints and general feel, including some reflection of his supposed awesomeness in the character of his girlfriend, who inspired stupidly obsessive love at first sight in other characters, didn't look pregnant at six months, and so on. I could have handled that, though. It could still be a solid three-star novel ("liked it" on the Goodreads scale) if that was the biggest problem. The story just was not as compelling as I'd hoped, though, and the ultimate supernatural danger at the eventual center of the plot was dull and off-putting as a seemingly pointless anti-MacGuffin that (literally) just hovered obnoxiously in the pages and afflicted people with a cheese-ass growing mark. The author made some effort to explain the improbable coincidences and absurdities by applying some ex post facto "this is too much to be a coincidence, there must be some secret conspiracy" suggestion at the end, but it was both too much and too little to just accept that ham-handed apology for the plot.

Then, of course, there's the weird post-9/11 salting with steaming piles of War-On-Tourism cheerleading crapped all over the story, plus some attendant racism that almost (but not quite) tried to apologize for itself. Seeing the main character seem interested in keeping his (literal) partner in crime from visiting injustice on the innocent just because they're "Arabs" (often using much less polite terms) was encouraging for a moment, until the token protestations that they had to be sure turned into "Well, no biggie, kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out!" motivation and behavior that really did nothing to truly justify the actions until long after it was too late to fix things if it turned out they were wrong. Yeah, the Goodreads rating went right down the shitter, there.

I still read to the end, because by the time the final nail got pounded into this coffin it was close enough to the end that it's worth just being able to say I finished it when talking about how bad it was. The ending was not well-handled, even aside from the failings I described above, and ultimately Tom (the real hero of the story in some ways, and the only character who grew as a person) was just a caricature who had a caricature-quality moment of redemption. The innocent young girl was kind of a caricature, too, for that matter.

I suspect the main reason this book has such good reviews on average is the simple fact that, for the most part, anyone reading this book has read eight of them before it, which means these are people who have already proven they love this author's work. Usually, people who hate an author's work drop out much earlier in an unloved series, leaving only the true fans to give ever-higher average reviews, as fewer and fewer of the readers are of the sort who'd give books in the series less than five stars every time. This book certainly wasn't worth more than three even if you don't have the same specific distaste for the author's bigotry-by-proxy. I like a good anti-terrorism yarn, if well-handled; people who kill innocent bystanders (e.g. terrorists) piss me right off. The anti-terrorism parts of this novel were not that, though. They were just rank bullshit.

Yeah, fuck this book.

I now wonder whether The Tomb wasn't very good after all. I suspect the series just got more threadbare as it went on, and the author turned into some kind of neocon or neolib after 9/11, though. In any case, I won't seek out any of the books between the two I've read, or any following books, at this point.

[Michael T Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really wonder what reading these books must be like if you've already read Nightworld, which did come out before all the RJ books. Like, are all the events that happen in here & that seem so momentous at the time just brushed over in a paragraph or two of backstory?

In any case, after the tragedy at the beginning of this book, Jack is feeling pretty down, and because of the opening events (I feel silly trying to talk around them since they occur so early on, but I'd rather err on the side of not spoiling) gets to "pal around" with his brother, who's kind of a schmuck. I felt like a good 30% of this book was purely motivated by Gia acting out of character b/c certain events needed to happen, and without her pushing Jack into doing said events, he would've just said "no." But her reasoning for falling on the side she does is flimsy as all hell, and kind of ruined my suspension of disbelief.

That being said, the book was still a quick and enjoyable read, like the majority of the RJ series. We get the introduction of these Infernal devices, which kind of made me think of the Horcruxes in the Harry Potter universe (which, honestly, pretty much ruined the series for me, so here's hoping the Jack novels don't follow the same path).

It's weird to think we've still got awhile before Gia's damn due date, what with how compressed the RJ timeline is. Anyway, on to the next one ...

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this four stars purely based on it being part of a series that is still four stars. However I wonder if there was some long suffering editor out there who still has nightmares about calling up Mr Wilson saying "err I don't mean to be rude mate, but do you mind shutting a few terrible gaping plot holes." And then having those plot holes half-assedly filled by flimsy afterthought codicils that just don't cut it. It's naff to believe that Jack who is eternally thinking 5 steps ahead, just to exist, is somehow struck brain-dead for hours at a time, just when in reality, his brain should be in high gear. It's still a good book, and the plot is fine, but the contrivances to get from A to B will kill you.

[Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every installment gets better than the last. Sadly, this time Jack loses his father very early on in the story. He is then forced into situations where he has to determine what he should do on his own, or as something his late father would have approved of him doing. Helping his brother among those choices. The trouble is only beginning for Jack now.

The otherworldly parts of the book are again present (yay! I love this series for that) and Jack has to choose to take the fate of something upon himself, something that may very well end his existence.

The story flows along very nicely, I'd have read it in just a few days, but I'd been distracted this past week. As I tell everyone, if you are into this kind of writing, give it a try.

Thanks

[Trever · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far, all the Repairman Jack books are good, and worth reading, and this is no exception. That said, this one wasn't among my favorites as it seemed too wandery and scattered. There's a family reunion, Bermuda scuba adventures straight out of "The Deep", middle-eastern terrorists with their own storyline, and the most loathsome brother one could imagine. While I enjoyed it cover to cover, I did find myself getting frustrated with the zigzagging from plotline to plotline. Also, it's grim... like, way grim, so be sure you're in the mood for a lot of bleak teeth-on-edge stuff before diving in.

[Beth Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book. Interesting characters, fast moving plot. I generally don't like books with a supernatural element in it, but it was handled more like an ancient curse with a modern remedy, which made the story interesting. No wasted pages, and though the ending was somewhat predictable, how it comes about is not. I would read others from this writer, I do like the writing style. The back story would have probably been a bit clearer if you read them in order, but this stands alone pretty well.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little slow going at first. I really should be reading this series in order. I haven't read the book where he reconnected with his dad and that left me with questions. The other problem is I have read a book that comes after this one to where I know spoilers about the Otherness. Other than the fault of my own of not following continuity, the second half of this book was a real page turner. It's not often I pick up a book before work and read till it's time to go.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Repairman Jack has long been a favorite character. The books in this long series are thrillers with a good dose of magic realism to spice things up. Repairman Jack - not an appliance repairman, mind you! - is a fixer. Jack fixes seemingly impossible situations with cunning and, if necessary, violence.

[Dale · Rating 2 out of 5]

(each) a Repairman Jack Novel: some imagination via this author with the 2nd one better than the first, though both a bit eerie and not worth reading the other novels in the series. I would bet this auth. has a following just not for me…not bad enough to stop reading, just not good enough to say ‘get this one’

[Kirby Lord · Rating 5 out of 5]

I at first thought I wasn't going to like this one as F Paul Wilson designed a character so slimy and so unlikable it was difficult to be on the same page with them, but that was all part of the magic. It was incredible, emotionally harrowing with some intense tear jerking scenes. Not as action packed as some of the others, but beautifully written and still an edge-of-your-seat ride.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack at his finest. Infernal provided insight into who Jack is and his family. This installment was different than previous books, but each are somewhat different anyway.
Jack never disappoints, even if you can guess how the story ends, you want to experience it first hand. As good as always.

[Dolores Dureault · Rating 5 out of 5]

as always..rep jack never disapoints..although f.paul seems to have a touch of the bizzare, that seems to blend into real life issues in our day and time..never know what to expect..but thats the joy of reading a jack..thanx f paul..

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great display of helplessness. Lost with no way to turn. With family in peril but from which direction unknown. From the foundations of family wrongs and the distance we place between each other. Maybe one day a light will shine.

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the fourth or fifth of this series that I’ve read and this is the best thus far. I’ve been reading them out of order, but doesn’t seem to be much of an issue. F. Paul Wilson outdid himself on this one. Great story that is told well.

[Lavender · Rating 4 out of 5]

More bad news for Jack. This one is definitely a nail biter. The bad things happening to Jack lately just keep getting worse.

[Arlingtontexican · Rating 4 out of 5]

We met everyone in the family, had a books worth of adventure with each one.

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Blessed be the man who invented tempered steel." Ha! Thanks FPW.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

The hidden history continues to reveal itself :)

[Brett Grossmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good but not great. Jack coming out of the drug effects so fast was annoying. He was out. He would stay out. Having him wake up was lame and just there as s plot device

[Spurnlad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another top read in the Repairman Jack series.

[Ian Stewart · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boy, can you tell when this book was written.