Jack: Secret Vengeance

Young Repairman Jack, Book 3

De: F. Paul Wilson

Narrado por: Alexander Cendese

Everyone loves senior Carson Toliver, the captain and quarterback of the football team, heartthrob of South Burlington County Regional High - especially the girls. Even Jack's best friend, Weezy, has a crush on him. And unlike most of the popular kids at school, he's not stuck-up. Jack even sees him defending a piney kid who is being bullied in the hall. That is why Jack is so surprised when Weezy tells him that Carson took her on a date and attacked her.

Jack tries to convince her to report Carson, but Weezy would rather just forget it ever happened. She begs him not to tell anyone, and Jack reluctantly agrees. But then Carson starts telling his own version of what happened that night, and suddenly everyone is calling her "Easy Weezy". Jack's concern turns to rage. Carson needs to be taught a lesson. With the help of the pineys - reclusive inhabitants of the mysterious Jersey Pine Barrens who have secrets of their own - Jack finds a way to exact secret vengeance....

In F. Paul Wilson's third young-adult novel, the teenage Jack demonstrates the skills that will serve him later in life as the urban mercenary known as Repairman Jack.

©2011 F. Paul Wilson (P)2020 Tantor

Fun Teen Adventure

The third book in this teen series is the best so far.

There is significantly more revelation and development of the main character and his sidekicks. Jack is deciding how he wants to live his life. (In one of his classes, his teacher asks the class to think deeply about what their core principles might be, and this is a major through-line in the book. We see much more about Weezy as well, who is dealing with even more than the usual teen angst attendant upon High School.

The major plot is a revenge plot, where Jack is conducting a major psychological terror campaign against a High School BMOC and bully. The details are entertaining and believable enough for this story. In this, Jack seems to be getting some kind of supernatural aid. The resolution of this plot is a bit over-the-top, frankly, but until the end, it's the best part of this book.

The secondary plot is about a political candidate who exhibits his potential unfitness for the office that he is running for, and Jack works to expose that unfitness...and finds out about unintended consequences.

The overarching plot of the previous books is mostly in the background, being limited to weird occurrences and people seemingly exhibiting magical powers of one sort or another. By book three of a series, I would have liked to see more about this storyline.

Since the last book in this sub-series was published 14 years ago and seems to be about an adult protagonist, I'm going to assume that this is just a prequel to the real story being told later, but I rather expect more resolution from a trilogy than there is here. I expect that I will try out the main series at some point in the near future, but without that, this trilogy is entertaining, but a bit weak, even though this volume is entertaining.

I've listened to all of the Repairman Jack series it was nice to learn of the characters' younger beginnings.

The narrator. I hate when a series changes narrators. it changes our favorite voices we've associated with the characters.

Jack Early Years

SECRET VENGEANCE is the third of the Repairman Jack prequels and is another excellent glimpse into the early years of Jack and how he became the Repairman Jack we all know and love.