All the Rage (Repairman Jack)
Reading a Repairman Jack novel seems, at times, a guilty pleasure; it's  astonishingly easy to inhale the pages, like eating potato chips. A firm-jawed  Mr. Fixit hero with a cryptic past--crunch! Crimes that go beyond (way,  waaay beyond) the norms of traditional law--smack! A liberal sprinkling  of screwball comedyandnasty supernatural beings--nowthat'stasty! Good, crispy fun, indeed. But F. Paul Wilson's tight plotting and  appealing characters manage to elevate potato chips to the realm of haute  cuisine (or at least a satisfyingly solid meal), and his latest,All the  Rage, is no exception.Everything's rosy when Nadia Radzminsky takes a dream research job at GEM  Pharmaceuticals: she'll be working for her professional idol, Dr. Luc Monnet;  her fiancé is one of GEM's top salespeople; she's got all sorts of high  tech toys to play with; and she'll get a million-dollar bonus if she can just  figure out how to stabilize GEM's most promising molecule (dubbed, ominously  enough for students of Norse mythology, Loki). But clouds quickly appear on the  horizon in the form of Milos Dragovic, a Serbian mobster with a short fuse, a  big wallet, and a profound interest in Loki's future. Nadia suspects Milos is  blackmailing her boss, and she hires Jack to find out what's going on.What Jack finds out isn't pretty: Loki is leading an underground life as  Berzerk, a hot, new street drug that brings out the user's most aggressive  behavior, frequently with deadly consequences. And Milos may be pushing Monnet  around, but the good doctor isn't objecting too strongly to the payoff. But when  Jack gets closer to the source of the mystery molecule, events take a very  personal turn: Loki is derived from the blood of rakoshi, those otherworldly and  decidedly vicious demons Jack had sworn to exterminate inConspiracies.  With his family threatened by both the rakoshi and the vengeful Serb, Jack must  take on both the monster and the mob.All the Ragehas the necessary ingredients for success, including a  snarkily amusing subplot involving a Brooklyn junkyard owner who's also out for  Milos's blood (Jack has to keep toning down his client's eager revenge plots,  and his substitution of industrial sludge for knives in one such plan is  particularly amusing). Dedicated Wilson fans will rejoice in the new addition to  the series, and neophytes will scramble to unearth the earlier installments.--Kelly Flynn