Cold City
Repairman Jack Prequel #1
By F. Paul Wilson
ISBN# 9780765330147
Author’s Website: http://www.repairmanjack.com/
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Sammy
Synopsis:
The first of three Repairman Jack prequels, revealing the past of one of the most popular characters in contemporary dark fantasy: a self-styled “fix-it” man who is no stranger to the macabre or the supernatural, hired by victimized people who have no one else to turn to.
We join Jack a few months after his arrival in New York City. He doesn’t own a gun yet, though he’s already connected with Abe. Soon he’ll meet Julio and the Mikulski brothers. He runs afoul of some Dominicans, winds up at the East Side Marriott the night Meir Kahane is shot, gets on the bad side of some Arabs, starts a hot affair, and disrupts the smuggling of preteen sex slaves. And that’s just Book One. (Goodreads)
Review:
This is my first book in the Repairman Jack series, I was completely caught off guard because in the synopsis it says ” contemporary dark fantasy” and in the book there were only a couple of times that even gave a tiny hint at anything out of the ordinary, with the darkness overtaking Jack. Other than that this story was more like a crime drama/suspense/thriller. I have read The Keep, which was a dark fantasy horror/thriller novel. But, am clearly unsure why “dark fantasy” was added in the description of this particular book.
There were a lot of threads in this story, so if a person doesn’t care for one, they can find something else to pull them into the story. At times it was difficult to keep all the characters straight and which faction they belonged to. Even with all the things going on, it was very impressive how the author overlapped them in interesting round about ways. The story is written about the 1990’s and has many prejudices and racial slurs written in the book, at times it made me extremely uncomfortable, especially with how things are in the world today. It did make sense within the story because that is how a person would have spoken and no one would have thought anything about it back then.
My favorite quote:
“There are certain things I will not abide in my sight“
How great would it be if we all lived like that, oh not with a baseball bat lol , but making sure when things are wrong we do something. I really enjoyed learning about guns, the difference between a pistol and a handgun. Loved that the author used the word nomenclature more than once and then put it in a fabulous sentence:
“Hey, you’re the self-proclaimed nomenclature nerd.”
And of course learning how use the words schlemiel and schlimazel? Wonderful!
I found Jack to be very naive and yet insightful an interesting combination, even though it was super difficult to buy that it took him until page 234 to figure out about Abe and his gun selling, perhaps because he was family of sorts??? Later in the book when Abe says to Jack that he is like a chameleon it was a perfect way to describe Jack, because that’s how he came across in this story being able to fit in, in all different circumstance.
Overall I really liked this story and all the threads, what really brought down the rating was how it ended, or should I say not ended. Virtually nothing was resolved in this book, it left the reader hanging. Yes, I understood it was a trilogy, but something more could have been finished. I will read the rest of this series after all three books are out, clearly I don’t like to be left dangling from a cliff. I usually will not continue reading a story that ends in that way, but this story is well written and has a lot going for it and I want to find out what happens. I would recommend this book for young adults as well as adults who enjoyed the The Sopranos, Criminal Minds and Numbers etc…, and obviously fans of the Repairman Jack series.
