BLOODLINE

Wilson’s 11th Repairman Jack thriller (Harbingers, 2006, etc.) sends that resourceful private investigator in against a couple of lowlife half brothers who share DNA from hell.

In retreat from the world following an assassination attempt on his artist girlfriend Gia—a hit-and-run attack by automobile that ended the life of Jack’s unborn daughter and left Gia in physical and mental shatters—Jack wants no new cases. He just wants to get Gia back on track and protect her and her daughter Vicky from any further attacks. And he would like to clear up the mystery of the Watcher, a dimly seen dude in a fedora who hangs around outside Jack’s window at night but who is nowhere to be seen when Jack goes looking for him in the street. He also wants to get the story on the Compendium, a spooky book he’s got custody of. So he is in no mood to take on the case offered by single mother Christy Pickering, who wants her unlovely teenage daughter Dawn separated from Jeremy Bolton, the oily, menacing, would-be game designer who has seduced and fascinated the much younger girl. Gia, however, presses Jack to take the case, thinking they both need to get back to normal. Normal? Jack’s investigation quickly reveals that Bolton is the subject of a top-secret federal study as the possessor of a particularly nasty strain of DNA, an aberration that makes him homicidally violent. The feds have erased Bolton’s criminal past to check out a serum that might make that nasty temper controllable. Bolton’s half brother Hank Thompson, who has the same DNA, also pops up in the investigation. Hank is the leader of the Kickers, a mysterious new cult with roots in the Compendium. The evil half brothers are carrying out their late father’s instructions to pass their DNA down to the next generation, all of which has to do with why Dawn is in the picture.

Fast-moving nonsense that leaves things hanging for the next episode.