COLD CITY kicks off The Early Years Trilogy. It’s 1990. A twenty-one-year old named Jack has dropped out of college, leaving his old life behind to build a new one in NYC. This is pre-Disney Manhattan and the city still has lots of rough edges. He has connected with Abe but is unaware of his real business. He will soon meet Julio but doesn't own a gun yet. He runs afoul of some machete-wielding Dominicans, hires on as a driver for a smuggler, wanders into the East Side Marriott the night Rabbi Kahane is killed, starts a hot affair, winds up on the wrong side of some jihadist Arabs, and disrupts a ring smuggling pre-teen sex slaves. And that's just Book One.
“In Wilson’s lively first in a projected trilogy of prequels to his Repairman Jack saga, Jack, newly arrived in Manhattan, begins honing the skills that will eventually make him a formidable urban mercenary who operates off the grid. Jack’s talent for finding trouble is already well developed, as becomes clear when his job smuggling cigarettes runs him afoul of Arab jihadists, the mob, and a ring of sex slavers. Wilson expertly evokes Manhattan in all its gritty glory in the early ’90s and introduces series regulars Abe Grossman, Jack’s gunrunner and surrogate father, and Julio, the hard-working barkeep at Jack’s preferred watering hole, the Spot… this valentine to Jack’s legion of fans still packs a wallop that whets the appetite for his next early adventure.” (Publisher’s Weekly)
“If fans want to know how Repairman Jack became the champion of the victimized, they’ve got to pick up Cold City. It’s a one-night read that will keep the lights burning. Gritty, harsh and often funny, it takes readers back to Jack’s early days, tosses him in with colorful characters and lets readers see his basic decency even as he breaks the law.” (RT Booklover’s Magazine – a November Top Pick)
“This is, oddly enough, perhaps an ideal jumping-on point for prospective readers, and I don't say that lightly. This is a character who's been around for quite awhile, with many books in his wake; however, this is a look at who he is and how he becomes the guy we know from the Adversary Cycle. You could easily go further back and read the Young Jack tales (all of them well worth reading), but if you want to see Jack as a young man, growing into the legend he'll become, this is a good place to begin. Fans of Wilson's…will be delighted, and readers who want a good, solid noirish tale will be delighted as well. Wilson is a fantastic storyteller; this book may be the beginning of a swan song for the character Repairman Jack, but he's certainly going out on a high note. Highly recommended. (SFRevu)