One of the books I read while on vacation in New York was a young adult novel by F. Paul Wilson called Jack: Secret Histories, which introduces us to Repairman Jack as a young man.

If you're unfamiliar with Jack, he's a guy who lives off the grid, so to speak - no social security number, no drivers license, no real record of his presence. For a living he "fixes" situations for clients - situations where someone needs to be made to sorta see things differently for the client. He's never been averse to going outside the law to make things right. But Jack has been drawn into a cosmic battle between good and evil, or more accurately, between indifference and destruction. It's a strange world, one which supposedly surrounds us but of which we all are generally unaware. To go with this, there is a forgotten, secret history of mankind that goes with this struggle, goes back far further than recorded history.

In this book, Jack has his first exposure to the strangeness and to the conflict, though he is more or less unaware. He and his childhood friends Eddie and Weezy (Louise) are drawn into strange occurences in their home town.

This was a good story. I think it would stand alone without the ties to the overall arc of the story that is playing out through Wilson's more adult books, but in that context it gives its readers a bit more understanding about the circumstances that created the guy known as Repairman Jack. It's hard to categorize this book (or the entire series, including the adult novels) because there are elements of thrillers and action novels, of science fiction novels and horror novels. I don't know how a young reader will react to some of the subject matter. I know I don't think my 10 year old is ready for it, but I won't have any qualms about him reading it if he wants to when he's around 12 or 13.

Jack is a pretty interesting adult character, and this book shows that he was a pretty interesting kid, too.

*****