Bloodline by F.Paul Wilson
**** 384 pages Hardcover Tor
The 10th Repairman Jack Novel Harbingers was pretty hard to top. The Brutal twists and turns that all had horrible and deep effects on the life of the title character. I mean wow, I think Harbingers was no doubt the best entry in the series so far. I knew That the next book Bloodline would have the tough job of following up and moving the story forward.
The events of the novels are starting to run together and it's almost impossible to talk about the plot to this one without spoilers I'm going to try. As the novel begins Jack and his new young family are trying to over come the awful events of Harbingers. Jack is approached for a fix-it job, a rich woman is looking for dirt on the older man dating her 18 year old Ivy league bound daughter. Sounds easy enough right, but Jack should remember what the Lady with the dog keeps telling him..."there are no coincidences in your life anymore."
He should have listened because once he looks into the case he discovers that is of course relates to the secret history of the world and the conflict with the Otherness. As this novel unfolds it's various threads I had the same thought I often do when reading novels in this series-- It's too much much and this is never going to weave together. Alas there is good reason that Wilson teaches plotting at the Borderlands writers book camp, to quote the cheezy Bond theme "no body does it better..." He is a master as it weaved together i was shaking my head in disbelief...It actually works.
The ending is heartbreaking and wicked. Just when I thought this was the repairman jack novel that wasn't going to work, or that it would be cheezy Wilson pulls it out perfectly. Really at the heart of this novel it's about DNA, I have a feeling that Wilson was thinking about what it is inside us that makes us a good or bad person. Are we born that way? Can the things in our DNA that make us good or bad be enhanced or suppressed.
If there is a weakness to the novel is how quickly the events of the last novel seemed to be pushed past, (although he makes up for this in the next two books) It didn't distract from the novel over all. The repairman Jack series continues toward the end with intensity, well done.
Spoilers:
(For the Korean revenge movie Oldboy as well) I am sure Wilson had not seen the Korean revenge epic Oldboy (graphic novel and film) when he wrote bloodline. I am aware that they are totally different, but the end of oldboy being in my brain did take some of the punch out of the twist ending of this novel. I mean it's a shocking reveal when we discover that Dawn is pregnant by a man who is her biological father, but it's not Wilson's fault that i have seen Oldboy. I liked that the plot to get Dawn pregnant was connected to the otherness while at the same time exploring the themes of DNA that Wilson seemed to want to explore.
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