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Pride can be dangerous sin. It can lead you into such temptations that you find it impossible to resist. Certainly that is the case for Dr. Luc Monnet. He thinks he can retrieve his family's lost fame as a vintner by wholesaling a new designer drug, Loki, through his legitimate pharmaceutical company. He is stymied by being unable to stabilize the drug's chemistry. Its natural state dissipates every 28 days, forcing him to return to the source each month. He hires Nadia Radzminsky, a brilliant organic chemist he seduced while he was her university tutor. He thinks his charm will overcome her reluctance. Luc is unaware that she's in love with someone else and that she is having second thoughts about him and this job. But he is desperate. His dealer, Milos Dragovic, leader of a violent ex-Serb army crime family running their operations in the heart of New York, wants nothing more than to continue collecting a fortune in sales and baiting Luc and his partners. His latest was outbidding a frustrated Luc at a wine auction. Dragovic will crank up the pressure once it is discovered this may be the last batch of the drug available. Enter Repairman Jack.

Repairman Jack is F. Paul Wilson's dark fantasy hero of average proportions. You'd be hard-pressed to notice him in any crowd of more than five. But do so at your peril. Jack has single-handedly saved the planet many times from the forces of The Otherness, that other dimension chock-full of unseen horrors popularized many years ago by such talents as H.P. Lovecraft. All The Rage is the fourth novel to feature Jack.

Jack is hired by Nadia to discover a way to free Luc and his company (and her employer) from the clutches of Dragovic. She can't afford Jack's fee but he has another paying client looking to get even with Dragovic. Jack has some unique resources at his disposal. He's off the books with the government, he's ruthless, he's relentless. Soon, he finds he's up against a rakosh, one of those shark-like man-eating bipeds thought vanquished in past novels and the source of much terror for Jack and those he loves. To add fuel to his rage, Jack soon discovers he's tangled with this one before and its blood is the prime ingredient of Luc's drug. Oh how small the world seems.

All The Rage is a thrill-a-minute carnival ride that will leave you chortling with glee and slightly nauseous. There is nary a wasted word in this story with its imagined dread and lurking frenzy. You'll be anxious to read (or re-read) the other Repairman Jack novels (The Tomb, Legacies and Conspiracies). But don't forget to notice F. Paul Wilson's tips of the hat to those who have travelled this dank path ahead of him. My favourite is the "Famous Fish Dinners" at Memison's restaurant.

Rodger has read a lot of science fiction and fantasy in forty years. He can only shake his head and say, "So many books, so little time."