Secret Histories by F. Paul Wilson

Ever come across a situation that simply wasn't right—where someone was getting the dirty end of the stick and you wished you could make things right but didn't know how? Fourteen-year-old Jack knows how. Or rather he's learning how. He's discovering that he has a knack for fixing things. Not bikes or toys or appliances—situations.... It all starts when Jack and his best friends, Weezy and Eddie, discover a rotting corpse—the victim of ritual murder—in the fabled New Jersey Pine Barrens. Beside the body is an ancient artifact carved with strange designs. What is its secret? What is the secret of the corpse? What other mysteries hide in the dark, timeless Pine Barrens? And who doesn't want them revealed? Jack's town, the surrounding Barrens, his friends, even Jack himself...they all have...Secret Histories. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

I had a blast reading this. It takes place in 1983 or 84 and brought me right back to my childhood with all of the pop culture references. Even though it was written for a younger audience, there were PLENTY of references in there that only adults would understand. Having read the complete Repairman Jack series, it was also fun to see some of the characters earlier influences and the foreshadowing of certain events.

Jack: Secret Histories by F. Paul Wilson

I am not a “Repairman Jack” reader. I think I tried one a few years ago and decided that it was too much of a by the numbers actioner with the uber-competent hero. On the other hand, I liked F. Paul Wilson forty years when he was writing libertarian science fiction, although I didn't follow him when he turned to horror. Also, I read some of his “secret history” stories and enjoyed them.

So, bottom line, if there are references to later books in here, and I imagine there are, I didn't catch them.

What I found was a solid young adult mystery story with a cultic overlay. Young Jack is fourteen and it is the summer before entering ninth grade at the local high school. He and his friends, Weezie and Eddie, travel out to the New Jersey Pine Barren and find a body and a strange object. They try to ascertain if the object is an ancient artifact but find themselves being stalked. And then deaths tied to the strange and secret Septimus lodge start happening around time.

It's up to Jack to figure out what's happening to whom.

I particularly liked Wilson's Pine Barren setting. He has had some other stories in the same setting and it seems that he has local knowledge. I would never have considered New Jersey a place for the occult, so I was surprised to discovery that the Pine Barrens hold their own mystery.