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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780812566543
ISBN number: 0812566548
Label: Tor Books
Manufacturer: Tor Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 512
Printing Date: October 14, 2001
Publishing house: Tor Books
Sale Popularity Level: 14088
Studio: Tor Books
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Product Description:
Can you imagine a new chemical compound, a non-addictive designer drug that heightens your assertiveness, opens the door to your primal self, giving you an edge wherever you compete? Whether on the street or the football field, in a classroom or a boardroom. Wouldn’t you be tempted to try it . . . just once? What happens if it releases uncontrollable rage and makes you a killer?
Amazon.com Review:
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 comedy and nasty supernatural beings--now that's tasty! 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 in Conspiracies. With his family threatened by both the rakoshi and the vengeful Serb, Jack must take on both the monster and the mob.
All the Rage has 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
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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While All the Rage didn't grab me and drag me in the immediately the way The Tomb, the very first book in the Repairman Jack series did, I stuck with it and was glad I did. We get to learn more about Repairman Jack and the people in his lives. I would certainly recommend this series to anyone searching for something a little different.
Rated by buyers -
What can you say about Repairman Jack? No, seriously - I wish I knew someone like Repairman Jack. I have a couple of ex-husbands...
We could all use a Repairman Jack in our lives.
Rated by buyers 
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This was my very first foray into the Repairman Jack series and I have to say it was an entertaining ride. The plot is convoluted (in a good way) filled not so much with plot twists, as with hairpin turns. Wilson manages to keep a number of balls in the air as he juggles multiple story lines that criss cross each other again and again.
This is a plot driven suspense novel, so the reader should be prepared to suspend belief a little. The characters serve the plot. They are game pieces being moved around by the author. Fans may not agree with me, but as a very first time reader of the series, I have to say Repairman Jack is a little lacking as an action hero. I was perplexed by his incompetence.
First off, he charges a substantial fee for a pretty mundane job (a young medical researcher is worried her boss may be in trouble with a Serbian mobster and wants Jack to look into it). As it turns out (of course) the job is not as mundane as it very first appears - but Jack doesn't know this when he accepts it and charges the big fee for his special talents. And what services does Jack offer for this fee? An embarrassingly low-tech surveilance of the researcher's boss and the mobster. No background searches, no computer work, no surveillance equipment - nothing (not even photographs or a sound recording). Jack doesn't even have employees to do some of the surveillance work so he has to alternate following the two targets.
Later in the novel, Jack torments the Serbian crime lord with a series of practical jokes that are so environmentally irresponsible that it boggles the mind. These pranks also recklessly endanger some innocent bystanders. Of course the author ensures that no innocents are injured (at least not seriously) and the pranks work out perfectly. The positive outcome is a contrivance of the author and should in no way be used as evidence of Repairman Jack's competence.
Another case in point: Jack's girlfriend and her daughter are potential targets of the Serbian mobster. Jack's plan to protect them consists of smashing into the mobster henchmen's car while wearing a fake moustache (a move that only seems to reinforce the notion that the henchmen are on the right track by spying on the woman) and then telling his girlfriend to stay in her house and pretend not to be home. It doesn't seem to occur to him that they might decide to get out of their car at some point and break into her house. I know if my wife and child were home alone with a pair of killers parked at the curb, I'd want to plan for that contingency.
I have no idea how Jack knew to bring 4 knives to a meeting he had no way of knowing would happen, but the real contrivance is the outcome of the meeting. Jack's plan relied on a rather improbable outcome. It was much more likely that one man would be left standing after the knives were drawn but again the author's contrivance compensates for Jack's poorly conceived plan.
And finally, when it comes time to do battle with a supernatural creature in the woods, Jack is about as effective as poodle fighting a lion. I won't spoil the ending for the reader, but let's just say that if Jack lives to fight another day, it isn't because he had a clever plan or used his sharply honed skills as a slayer of monsters.
But I digress....
The bottom line is, All the Rage is an entertaining, fast paced, periodically amusing supernatural thriller. I can only hope that Jack is more competent in his other novels.
Rated by buyers -
My wife and I found F. Paul Wilson's 4th Repairman Jack novel a utterly terrific and fresh read from start to finish. Bravo, Mr. Wilson, bravo!
Although readers can read any of the Repairman Jack novels as stand alone novels, it is more preferable to read them in order to get the 'full effect'. All 4 novels we've read thus far in the now 10-book series has been 1st rate reading. The sheer brilliance of F. Paul Wilson is the feeling my wife and I get with every novel we read as to Jack's slowly but ever-unfolding mystery. Is Jack more than what he appears? What exactly is the Otherness? And will Jack be somehow linked to it?
We think so.
All the Rage brings back the lone creature survivor called the Rakoshi from the thrilling 1st book - The Tomb. There are many twists and thrills in this adventure, from alien blood-fueled anabolic steroids to carny characters that are a treat to read. When Jack accidently drinks the super-steroid called Bezerk, his maniac state transforms him into a killing machine. From slaying Serbian hitmen and running from the Law, the pages burn with energy. Never dull, never boring.
The ending is utterly cool, with Jack persuing the creature alone in the Pine Barrens. Can't tell you how glad my wife and I are at finding this fantastic series by one of the most talented writers out there today. It is small wonder why these books are hugely popular.
How is it that Hollywood hasn't made a Repairman Jack movie? And we wonder who the reader fan base would like to see play Jack. Brad Pitt?
Read any or all of the Repairman Jack novels. They are all of that and a bucket of chicken thus far.
Rated by buyers -
When I very first read F. Paul Wilson, I thought of him as a horror writer, but the more I read of his books, the less I feel the label applies. Yes, he writes horror, but most of his novels would probably be better categorized as supernatural adventure: action-oriented thrillers that have an otherworldly quality. Of course, you're unlike to find such a genre in the book store, but many writers don't fit into those simple categories.
All The Rage is the fourth book in Wilson's Repairman Jack series and is part horror, part thriller and part science fiction. In it, Jack learns of a drug with a street name of Berzerk. The manufacturers, however, are a semi-legitimate drug company who refer to it as Loki. The effect of Loki is to unlock a person's aggressive side; in minute doses, this can be positive, but with too much, a person will become vicious and potentially homicidal.
Jack is hired by Nadia Radzminsky, a scientist working for the drug firm GEM. She is afraid her boss is being extorted by a local gangster Milos Dragovic and wants Jack to help him. Jack decides to take on Dragovic in a very indirect manner, in an effort to help not only Nadia, but another client as well. What neither Jack nor Nadia are aware of is that her boss is in business with Dragovic; specifically, the selling of Berzerk.
Loki gets its name because, like the Norse god, it is something of a shapeshifter. Every new moon, the fresh batches of Loki suddenly change into an inert chemical. What's stranger is all records of Loki's original form disappear and even memories of it grow vague. Nadia, unaware of the drug's use, is recruited to try and synthesize the drug. What she is also unaware of is that the source of the drug is a demonic being known as a rakosh, the last survivor of a previous confrontation with Jack (back in The Tomb).
While All The Rage has a more-or-less standalone story, it is better appreciated if you've read the very first three Repairman Jack books. Besides the plot in this book, there is a larger story going on, one that pits Jack against something called The Otherness and a demonic being disguised as the human Sal Roma. This bigger story - which also relates to many others of Wilson's non-Jack novels and stories and continues beyond this book - has a nice Lovecraftian feel to it.
What's most important, however, is that this book, like its predecessors, is a fun read. Jack makes a good hero. Although both likable and intelligent, he is no superhero and he continues to find himself in way over his head. If you have enjoyed other books in the series, this should be another good read; if you haven't, start with the Tomb and get to this book later.
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