Reviews
The problem with novel series is that they inevitably begin to decline. What was fresh at first starts to go stale as the author(s) begin to spin off wilder and more far-fetched scenarios in an attempt to keep their protagonists challenged and their readers hooked. That was how I felt about the third Dexter novel, which began to pointlessly wander into supernatural territory, and it’s how I’m feeling about Wilson’s Bloodline and Preston & Child’s The Wheel of Darkness.
Bloodline is the 11th book in the Repairman Jack series (which is linked by metaphysical background to the six books of the Adversary series). For those of you who haven’t read them, Jack’s a nondescript New York guy who lives completely off the legal grid and “repairs” things that for one reason or another can’t be handled by the law. The early books were most interesting for the descriptions of how Jack, who has no amazing skills, secret stash of wealth, or super-secret powerful government contacts, manages to keep himself anonymous while busting criminals and solving crimes. The supernatural hovered in the background, but it hadn’t taken over Jack’s life. But by Bloodline everything in the novels revolves around his role in the struggle between the Adversary and the rest of the world — in this case, the mysterious concentration of a genetically mutated bloodline over several generations. I miss the simplicity of the earlier novels. Wilson has written a couple of Repairman Jack short stories that shun the supernatural and put him back in the street doing his thing, and I appreciated those much more than I liked this latest novel.
The Wheel of Darkness is the 8th book from Preston & Child to include Agent Prendergast; the 6th to revolve specifically around him (he was more of a “guest star” in Relic and Reliquary. I got hooked on Prendergast in the extremely good Still Life with Crows — featuring a very nifty killer/motive and have even made the ultimate sacrifice of buying two novels about him, when I grew eager to read what happened in books 2 and 3 of the Diogenes Trilogy and was too impatient to wait for the library to get them. But … Prendergast, unlike Jack, really is an unbelievable superstud, and he grows more unbelievable with each novel. In Relic he was just a kinda mysterious, super-cool FBI agent, but now he’s, I dunno, Doc Savage times ten or something. Mental abilities to put Lecter to shame. And it’s getting tiresome. Ultra-competent heroes are just as boring as heroes whose lives are constantly revolving around unthinkably metaphysical struggles. In this novel, Prendergast is at least free of Diogenes (kind of) and off on an independent adventure, but it still has strong links to the other novels and although for a moment we’re teased with the possibility of him turning into a villain — now, that would certainly revive the series — alas, he recovers. I liked the series better when Prendergast was a mystery — for several novels we didn’t even know his first name. Now the book rubs our nose into it, introducing him by first name in virtually every chapter. Yawn.
drupagliassotti @ February 1, 2008