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Gateways
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Product Description
In Gateways, Jack learns that his father is in a coma after a car accident in Florida. They've been on the outs, but this is his dad, so he heads south. In the hospital he meets Anya, one of his father's neighbors. She's a weird old duck who seems to know an awful lot about his father, and even a lot about Jack.
Jack's arrival does not go unnoticed. A young woman named Semelee, who has strange talents and lives in an isolated area of the Everglades with a group of misshapen men, feels his presence. She senses that he's "special," like her.
Anya takes Jack back to Dad's senior community, Gateways South, which borders on the Everglades. Florida is going through an unusual drought. There's a ban on watering; everything is brown and wilting, but Anya's lawn is a deep green.
Who is Anya? Who is Semelee, and what is her connection to the recent strange deaths of Gateways residents-killed by birds, spiders, and snakes-during the past year? And what are the "lights" Jack keeps hearing about-? Lights that emanate twice a year from a sinkhole deep in the Everglades . . . lights from another place, another reality.
If he is to protect his father from becoming the next fatality at Gateways, there are questions Jack must answer, secrets he must uncover. Secrets . . . Jack has plenty of his own, and along the way he learns that even his father has secrets.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #816821 in Books
- Published on: 2003-11-01
- Original language: English
- Binding: Hardcover
- 368 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
As in his last Repairman Jack novel, The Haunted Air (2002), Wilson deftly contrasts the self-imposed isolation of his vigilante hero with the forced exile of society's outcasts. When he learns that his estranged father is in a coma after a car accident, Jack travels to Florida, where his father has been living in a retirement community, Gateways South, which encroaches a bit further into the Everglades than the brochures would have you think. Jack soon has another run-in with what he calls "the Otherness," a Lovecraftian evil that here pervades a lagoon and the community of mutated rednecks surrounding it. Wilson is unsurpassed in depicting his characters' feelings of alienation as they attempt to comprehend the cosmic forces that have misshapen their lives. Particularly vivid is Semelee, an albino woman-child who achieves a certain degree of domination over her mostly male brethren by virtue (or lack thereof) of her sexuality. Jack's reconciliation with his father, along with the discovery that his father is also no stranger to the finer points of violence, could have been maudlin in the hands of a lesser writer, but Wilson provides just enough conflict between the two to allow their newfound love for each other to be convincing. This one will appeal to horror aficionados and to fans of Carl Hiassen and James Lee Burke.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The new Repairman Jack novel finds our heroic fix-it man on a road trip to Florida, where his father has recently been in a near-fatal car accident. The trip itself is dangerous enough (in the post-9/11 world, it is tough for a man with no official identity and a weapon strapped to his arm to get onto an airplane), but that's nothing compared to the danger he'll encounter in the Everglades. As usual, Wilson intrudes on the action with various pronouncements--witness, for example, the scene in which Jack flicks through stations on a car radio, and we're treated to (presumably) the author's opinions on country music and Lou Reed--but this time the main story, involving a series of murders and some mysterious creatures in the swampy glades, more than makes up for the frequent editorial intrusions. Wilson continues to mix the traditional thriller with elements of the supernatural in ways--not quite horror but more than mystery--that appeal to both sides of the genre fence. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Jack is righteous!" -Andrew Vachss
"This sixth novel in Wilson's gutsy Repairman Jack series (after Hosts) teams the righteous urban mercenary with his strangest bedfellows yet .. . . Readers know they can count on Wilson to weave the most unruly narrative strands into a tight Gordian plot and he doesn't disappoint here. . . . The tale speeds briskly to its spooky climax . . . Above all, the novel enhances the enigma of Jack, a hero who commands respect " -Publishers Weekly on The Haunted Air
"Repairman Jack is a wonderful character, ultracompetent but still vulnerable. While there's plenty of violence in Conspiracies, there's also a lot of humor. Wilson strolls into X-Files territory and makes it his own, keeping the action brisk and the level of suspense steadily rising." --San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle
"Repairman Jack is one of the most original and intriguing characters to arise out of contemporary fiction in ages. His adventures are hugely entertaining."
--Dean Koontz
"Like the best of Dean Koontz's work, Wilson's work combines an action/adventure yarn with a touch of the fantastic. . . .They're smart, exciting, and, most of all, fun. --The Denver Post
