F. Paul Wilson wrote the first Repairman Jack story in 1984. The Tomb told a realistic, semi-horror tale about an average guy with a not-so-average life in New York City, who encountered horrific creatures brought over from India in a revenge plot. The central figure in The Tomb, known as Repairman Jack, lived outside the law, so to speak. He brought his own moral code, very much in tune with John Locke's thoughts on society: those who initiate violence are fair game. Jack's trade involves fixing difficult problems for people: he is not a murderer for hire, but knows violence can be part of the job.

After The Tomb, Wilson left his intriguing character alone on a roof-top, fate unknown, until he wrote Nightworld, in 1992, where Jack re-appeared as a supporting cast member, seemingly in a new universe, one more malevolent, almost Lovecraft-meets-Calvin, with monsters and predestination. Then another gap, this time only six years, as Jack re-surfaced in Legacies, set after The Tomb but before Nightworld. And that set the ball rolling, as 13 more Repairman Jack novels followed, one per year, until 2011's The Dark at the End, which led directly to Nightworld, and the Repairman Jack saga ended.

But not quite. Three young adult novels followed, with Jack aged 14 and entering high school, highlighting the genesis of Jack's future career, yet also infused with characters and elements that appeared in many of the later Jack books. Yet even after The Dark at the End, fans clamored for more, and F. Paul Wilson responded with a new trilogy: one set in the years after the death of his mother and before the events of The Tomb, detailing how Jack became “Repairman Jack.” The first novel in this trilogy is Cold City.

The problem Wilson faces is how to write a compelling mid-story about a character with whom so much is known. Jack arrived in The Tomb fully formed, a capable, resourceful man of action. In Cold City Jack is none of those things, getting by initially on sheer luck and force.

The book opens with Jack arriving in New York with few skills. Leaning on his yard-work experience to find a job in landscaping, we find Jack a lonely, disaffected and quick to anger noob in the city. His one friend is Abe, whose uncle he worked for in his hometown. When Jack's rage costs him his job, he is forced to look for something else, and falls into the world of cigarette smuggling. It's lucrative work, but one on the edge of polite society, where other darker characters exist. Jack discovers, in this world, protection is only as good as your own, and that means getting to know how to use weapons, and when to use them.

Cold City moves at a brisk pace. The characters are compelling, and we learn a great deal about Abe and Julio, both whom feature in the later RJ novels. We see Jack struggling to loosen the ties to his past, to break free of everything. The traumatic reaction to his mother's death shapes him as a person, but he clearly has a moral foundation, and doesn't embrace nihilism and despair. While in a sense a criminal, he retains certain scruples that the later Jack has set aside, and this gets him in trouble several times.

One major downside to the novel is that many characters from the later novels appear in a book set long before The Tomb, including the ice-cream suit clad actuator, Ernst Drexler, and his young enforcer, Kris Szeto. Both appeared for the first time in 2009's Ground Zero, yet Wilson must regret not having introduced Drexler sooner, as he shows up in the young Jack books and now again figures as a main antagonist in the twenty-something Jack books. Having wished for a Secret History-free “City” trilogy, I anticipate the next two books will simply push that angle harder, to the detriment of Jack's history and growth into Repairman Jack. That said, Wilson's skill at pacing and character development make any of his books nearly impossible to set down. With the sequel due out in late 2013 and the final book in 2014, we have a complete Repairman Jack saga from beginning to end.