(pb; 2000: fourth book in the Repairman Jack series)
From the back cover
“Can you imagine a new
chemical compound, a non-addictive designer drug that heightens your
assertiveness, opens the door to your primal self, giving you an edge wherever
you compete, whether on the street or the football field, in a classroom or a
boardroom? Wouldn’t you be tempted to try it. . . just once? What happens if it
releases the uncontrollable rage and makes you a killer?”
Review
Wilson’s Rage is full-on-screenplay/nothing-left-to-the-imagination ambitious, a mostly excellent novel with its thoroughly explored characters (some annoying, e.g., the often shrill/emotional-flip-out Gia), memorably wild and well-foreshadowed situations, and story-centric callbacks to earlier Repairman Jack books. Fans of H.G. Wells’s 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau (or at least three of its cinematic adaptations) may especially enjoy Rage, which often references Jack’s fondness for it.
If I have any nits about Rage,
it’s that some of its near-the-end scenes run a bit longer than necessary
(almost to the point of ridiculousness, character motivation-wise) or the
characters do or say dumb things. But this is a minor complaint for an
otherwise superb work, one worth reading
and owning, despite its several overlong end-chapters. Followed by Hosts (2001).
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