Thursday extracts: a little grammar lesson

Abe picked up the yoghurt container and peered at the label.
"Non-fat shouldn't taste this good. You're sure it's non-fat?"
"That's what it says. And less calories too."
"Fewer calories."
"Less." Jack pointed to the bright yellow flag on the container. "Says so right there."
"I should accept a yoghurt label as my authority on grammar? Trust me, Jack, it's 'fewer'. Less fat - okay. But fewer calories."

F Paul Wilson
Conspiracies (A Repairman Jack novel)
2008

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Gotta love a thriller writer who makes space for an English lesson!

More Repairman Jack

Looking back, volume two of the Repairman Jack series (Legacies) was relatively normal. True, there was a hefty chunk of science fiction mixed in with the mystery thriller - a kind of Mickey Spillane meets Isaac Asimov - but after the surprises of volume one it was relatively straightforward, particularly since the chosen bit of science fiction is thought by some to be real. Conspiracy theorists would have you believe that it actually happened, but was hushed up for political reasons. (And that's the only clue you're getting. Read it yourself!) So the theme of book two might just be what inspired volume three - Conspiracies - because that same idea turns up again, alongside UFOs, secret military societies, satanist plots, and a host of other half-baked theories.

This time Jack's called in to track down one of the leaders of a group of conspiracy nuts, who has gone missing before a conference where she is scheduled to reveal her version of the truth behind many odd happenings. The group is called Society for the Exposure of Secret Organizations and Unacknowledged Phenomena, or SESOUP, pronounced 'sea-soup',  The name gives F Paul Wilson the opportunity to make lots of jokes along the lines of 'bouillabaisse' and 'fish stew'. One of the recurring characters in the series is Abe, Jack's gun supplier, who hides his true trade behind the counter of a sports shop. Abe is the 'voice of reason' who Jack consults whenever his customers become troublesome, or he needs a new weapon. It is Abe, who also doubles as the comedy relief, who is familiar with more versions of sea soup than anyone has a right to be.

Once again it's difficult to tell you much about the book without giving away too much of the plot, but suffice to say the cast of weird characters in Conspiracies is even more creative than in volume one, and almost nobody is what they first appear to be. There are plenty of opportunities for Jack to demonstrate his skills as a righter-of-wrongs, not least in the side story of a domestic violence case. Wilson weaves so many threads and cross-plots into this tale that I admit I'm still not exactly sure who murdered one of the bodies. In fact, given that Jack was the only person who saw the corpse, she might not actually be dead, and could well turn up again in volume four. That's the level of weirdness I'm starting to expect from this series.

Thriller with a difference

In Jobbing Writer bookworld you can't really beat a decent thriller: detective/private eye potboiler with a cast of miscreants and thugs, and a shining, but flawed, hero will do it for me every time. So when I came across The Tomb by F Paul Wilson I assumed I was in for 400-plus pages of shoot-'em-up hokum. But I was completely unprepared for the plot that followed.

It's a corker of a story and unlike anything I've read before. Repairman Jack puts things right, but he's no fixer of domestic appliances. He's an off-the-grid and off-the-wall soldier of fortune who fights dirty, but somehow manages to make his punishments fit the crime.

When his mother was killed in a pile-up caused by a hooligan's 'fun' idea of throwing a lump of concrete off a flyover and onto a passing car, he sets out to find the person responsible and pays him back by suspending him by the feet off the same flyover, then waiting till a few trucks have gone by.

But that's not the plot, that's just Jack's backstory.

He's a bit like a one-man A-Team: if you can find him, maybe you can hire him. He's expensive, but worth every cent. (The book's set in and around what appears to be New York.) Of course his sometime girlfriend Gia knows how to find him, so when her Aunt goes missing she knows just who to call.

Meanwhile Jack's been hired by a one-armed Indian diplomat to find a necklace stolen from an old lady in a mugging. The customer (they aren't clients - lawyers have clients) insists that the necklace has to be returned by midnight because the original owner, his grandmother, is dying.  Of course Jack succeeds, and is later thanked in a very personal way by the diplomat's sister, who happens to be wearing an identical necklace. (OK. At this point you'd need to be asleep to miss the connection, which would be a shame, because that's the first real hint that this novel is not your usual thriller!)

As the story continues it becomes clear that there's more than a little mysticism going on, including flashbacks to a 19th century raid on a temple of Kali by a renegade member of Queen Victoria's forces, who just happens to be an ancestor of the missing Aunt. That's how the family became fabulously rich, but it's also the time when a young acolyte of the temple lost an arm in a failed battle to stop the looting.

(You still with me here? Should I also point out that the diplomat wears an identical necklace with two large, orange stones that look like eyes?)

That's about as much as I'm going to tell you of the story because I'd hate to ruin such a cracking tale. Suffice to say that Jack finds himself embroiled in a fight with some very unusual opponents, not all of them human.

Since I finished The Tomb at the weekend I've also read Repairman Jack #2 - Legacies, and I've started onto #3 - Conspiracies. There are 15 in all, and I plan to make my way through the lot. Yes, they are that good.