Memphis Reads Archive

Fiction/Horror

Jesse Pool reviews CONSPIRACIES by F. Paul Wilson (Tom Doherty Associates, 1999)

Conspiracies is the third book in the Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson. I chose to read it because it involves conspiracy theories and found that it worked fine as a stand alone book. That being said, I enjoyed it so much that I am eager to read the rest of the series.

Repairman Jack, a secretive private investigator, reluctantly takes on what should be a simple job looking for a missing person. Lew, a local businessman, wants Jack to track down his missing wife, Melanie. At first Jack refuses the job, but is hooked when Lew says a mysterious message he received from his wife Melanie said that only Repairman Jack could help her and Lew offers him a huge fee. The story gets weirder as Lew tells Jack that Melanie spoke to him through the television set and that she has gone missing just days before she was expected to reveal her Grand Unification Theory (GUT) to an organization of conspiracy theorists that Lew and Melanie belong to called the Society for the Exposure of Secret Organizations and Unacknowledged Phenomena, or SESOUP for short.

Initially, Jack reasons that one of the members of SESOUP may be responsible for her disappearance, but doesn’t know what to believe after meeting a diverse group of conspiracy buffs who believe in the New World Order, UFO’s, and Satanic ritual abuse cults. Jack’s cage gets rattled some more as he’s assaulted by a monkey and followed by a pair of Men in Black. Things get weirder and weirder as the hunt for Melanie continues. Jack receives some strange packages and people at the SESOUP convention begin having some serious nightmares that hint something larger is going on in the shadows.

Jesse Pool, Highland Branch Library

Labels: Horror, Reviews by Jesse Pool