History Literature / RepairmanJack

* KickTheSonOfABitch: Jack does this ''all the time,'' and also sprinkles in a healthy mix of PayEvilUntoEvil when dealing with some of the human monsters he encounters. Once, he gut-shot a terrorist who'd planted a bomb on a plane, killing everyone on board. Wounds like this mean you die ''very'' slowly and ''very'' painfully. The terrorist begged Jack to call a doctor.
-->Jack: "I just asked everyone on the flight you bombed if you should get a doctor. Son-of-a-bitch, you know what happened? Not a single person raised their hand. ''So no doctor for you.''"

* UrbanFantasy: Jack's first outing may have been a straight horror novel, but his later books definitely grow into this after a while. Interestingly enough, while Jack as a character predates [[ComicBook/{{Hellblazer}} both of]] [[Literature/TheDresdenFiles the genre's]] [[TropeCodifier most notable codifiers]] by several years, the series itself arguably doesn't start evolving into this until ''Gateways'', which was written and published long after the latter two had become household names.

The ''Repairman Jack'' novels are a series spun off from the ''Nightworld'' novels (AKA ''Literature/TheAdversaryCycle'') by F. Paul Wilson.

* RareGuns: Jack's signature weapon for the first few novels is the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmerling_LM4 Semmerling LM4]], a extremely compact .45 that was practically handmade. This [[HoistByHisOwnPetard bites him in the ass]] during ''Hosts'', when [[spoiler: his use of the gun allows him to be identified by those he's tangled with before.]]

* ArcWords: "A spear has no branches"

* AuthorAvatar: Parodied. And then some!
-->Jack: ''"Your books are super." He saw Winslow swell with delight. Authors were so needy.''

* {{Blackmail}}: One of the reasons people to go Jack for help.

* CarpetRolledCorpse: Implied to be how Prather's roustabouts smuggled Doug Gleason's [[spoiler: still-living]] body out of his apartment.

* ColdSniper: [[spoiler:Jack's father.]]
* CombatPragmatist: Jack goes out of his way to point out that he isn't particularly good at fighting and that real fights are nothing like what is seen in the movies. As such he is quite possibly the most creative fighter this side of [[ComicBook/{{Watchmen}} Rorschach]] in terms of improvising to get an advantage over his opponents.

* ConMan: Some of Jack's targets and several of his friends are this.

* CurbStompBattle: Subverted; While Jack tends to win a lot of his fights hands down, it's quite rare that he ''actually'' beats someone down the way this trope would imply. Truth be told, he spends more time outthinking and outmaneuvering his opponents than he does fighting them, and a great deal of his victories required loads of prep-time beforehand.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The Dormentalist Church in ''Crisscross'' is clearly a stand-in for the Church of Scientology, and though the latter is established to exist as a separate entity in the setting, most of what's revealed about the Dormentalists is intentionally reminiscent of what had been revealed about Scientology by the time that book had come out.

* ExecutiveMeddling: There is no tomb in ''The Tomb''. [[note]]The publisher insisted on the title. Wilson had just released ''Literature/TheKeep'' and the publishers wanted to maintain the naming convention despite it being (at the time) unrelated. Why Wilson didn't at least call it "The Temple" or "The Freighter" (creepy locales it ''does'' include) isn't clear.[[/note]]

--->Jack: "I just asked everyone on the flight you bombed if you should get a doctor. Son-of-a-bitch, you know what happened? Not a single person raised their hand. ''So no doctor for you.''"

* RunningGag: In ''Conspiracies'', Abe refers to [=SESOUP=] by the names of one type of fish soup after another, and Jack always corrects him in exactly the same way.

* ScarsAreForever: Jack gets horrible scars from the Rakoshi. At one point they ''glow in the dark.''

* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: Jack receives an explanation as to why the Otherness doesn't kill him off:

* WrongAssumption: Jack makes these a few times throughout the series. Though this is [[JustifiedTrope justified]] in most cases, due to his lack of knowledge regarding the supernatural.

%%* UltimateEvil: The Otherness.

* MainliningTheMonster: In ''All The Rage'', blood from Scar-lip the rakosh is the sole source of the PsychoSerum Berzerk.

%%* BadassNormal: Jack%%How?

* EvilCripple: Kusum Bahkti has only one arm.

** It probably helps (or doesn't as the case may be), that the antagonist is honorable (he would have definitely honored the deal, for one), devoted to his family, and his drive for revenge stems from a horrible personal tragedy... so [[NotSoDifferent he's rather like Jack]], all told...

* NoNameGiven: Jack is just Jack, which makes people uncomfortable addressing him so familiarly.
** Jack's father and brother are just "Tom" in the text, as it'd give away Jack's surname if the readers learned theirs. Averted with his sister Kate, as she's married and uses her husband's surname.

* EldritchAbomination: The Rakoshi.

%%* EvilDetectingDog: Every dog a Lady has%%How?
%%* EvilGloating: Rasalom enjoys this.

** It probably helps (or doesn't as the case may be), that the antagonist is honorable (he would have definitely honored rhe deal, for one), devoted to his family, and his drive for revenge stems from a horrible personal tragedy... so [[NotSoDifferent he's rather like Jack]], all told...

%%Zero-context examples are not allowed on wiki pages. All such examples have been commented out -- please expand them before uncommenting them. An example without context is not a very good example -- how does the trop apply?

%%* KarmicDeath

* AntiHero: Being an morally gray off-the-grid mercenary/vigilante, Jack definitely fits this trope.

** In ''The Haunted Air'', he catches wind of a group of people abducting children and [[MistakenForPedophile comes to the obvious conclusion.]] [[spoiler: Turns out [[HumanSacrifice it's a lot]] [[PoweredByAForsakenChild worse than that]]...]]

%%* AntiHero: Jack

* EldritchAbomination: the Rakoshi

* WomanInWhite: Kolabati, when she meets Jack in ''The Tomb''.