Terrorists. Big Government. Communists. Nazis. The Yellow Peril. Papists. Romans. Carthaginians… The list extends into the mists of human history. As long as humans have survived, one group has focused upon another as the source of all ills, all fear, all evil. The names of these heartless creatures are invoked to scare the children and to control the masses. 

Yet from the perspective of the Bad Guys, the Good Guys are anything but. Gun banners see only gun nuts. Socialists see only heartless capitalists. Collectivists see only atomistic individualists. Who is the Enemy and who is the Ally?

In Repairman Jack’s world, such a question is not an idle one. The primary agent of the Adversary — Rasalom, a.k.a. Mr. Osala, a.k.a., the One — seeks to transform the earth into a heaven for him that is a hell for all others. The Ally of Jack is no ally, at all. Abandoning them without investigation should a single sign — the Lady — fade from its awareness, the Ally offers nothing tangible in support of those supposedly on “his” side. The Defender/Guardian/Paladin — Glaeken — is fading into oblivion while the Heir — Jack — struggles to grasp the enormity of the task that has been set before him.

In The Dark at the End, F. Paul Wilson brings together disparate threads in the penultimate tale of the “Secret History of the World” that leads to the final confrontation detailed in Nightworld. Anyone and everyone who does not appear in the latter story is at threat in this novel. So skillfully does Wilson construct his story, that I found myself sitting up late into the evening furiously turning pages to discover what happens between Jack and Rasalom, despite my knowledge that both must appear in the final volume. (How the revised Nightworld will reconcile recent additions to this saga with the original denouement will be revealed in 2012.)

The Dark at the End begins with an almost literal bang as Jack fends off yet another attack on the Lady (a.k.a., Mrs. Clevenger), the nonhuman entity that is all that stands between our reality and its transformation into the Otherness spearheaded by Rasalom. Jack, his childhood friends Louise “Weezy” (Myers) Connell and her brother Eddie, Glaeken (a.k.a. Veilleur, a.k.a. Old Man Foster), the Lady, and others feverishly wrestle with options on how to forestall the Change. Even the annoying Dawn Pickering holds a pivotal role in this drama as she seeks the location of her tentacled baby, spirited away at birth by Rasalom. Since without Rasalom the takeover by the Otherness would be impossible, the focus of this small band of people — or more precisely, Jack’s focus — centers on how to destroy the One. 

But killing a being who is nearly superhuman in his abilities is no easy task. Jack, however, is not one who lightly surrenders to the “inevitable.” His friend, Abe, owner of the Isher Sports Shop, provides him with equipment Jack hopes will literally obliterate the One. Teenaged Jack’s one-time employer, Ernst Drexler of the Septimus Order, forms a crucial link in the chain drawing the Repairman ever closer to his elusive target. 

Unfortunately, even an excellent repairman cannot fix — or anticipate — everything. Many factors and many enemies work to thwart Jack, a.k.a., John Tyleski. Hank, a.k.a., the Kickerman, and Septimus Order hitman Szeto have personal scores to settle with this mysterious interloper. Drexler is primarily out to protect himself, regardless of the cost. Rasalom’s driver, Georges, and Gilda, Szeto’s mother and Dawn’s former caretaker, unwittingly try to derail Jack’s hastily concocted assassination plot. Supposed-ally Dawn also continues her usual, blindly self-centered course and threatens to tangle Jack’s plans into a hopelessly knotted mess. Last, but hardly least, the vagaries of nature and random chance do what they can to frustrate Jack’s risky actions.