Rain Fall [Hardcover]

John Rain, a Japanese American konketsu, or half-breed, learned his lethal trade as a member of the U.S. Special Forces. Although tortured by memories of atrocities he committed in Vietnam, he has become a paid assassin, a solitary man who lives in the shadows and trusts no one, even those who pay extraordinary sums for his ability to make murder look like natural death. But the aftermath of an otherwise routine hit on a government bureaucrat brings Rain to the attention of two men he knows from the old days in Vietnam: a friend who's now a Tokyo cop and an enemy who betrayed Rain long ago and is now the CIA's station chief in Japan. Like the gangster who hired Rain to kill Yasuhiro Kawamura, they want something the dead man had--a computer disk containing proof of high-level corruption, information that could destroy Japan's ruling political coalition. The search for the disk leads them to a woman Rain has come to love, a talented young jazz musician who also happens to be Kawamura's daughter. In this taut, brilliantly paced debut thriller, set in a vividly rendered Tokyo, the author manages an unlikely feat; he earns the reader's sympathy and concern for his protagonist, an amoral assassin who is one of most compelling characters in recent crime fiction. --Jane Adams

Set in a memorable noir version of Tokyo (jazz clubs, whiskey bars, "love hotels"), Eisler's rich and atmospheric debut thriller winds its way around the city's extensive rail system and its upscale Western boutiques Mulberry, Paul Stuart, Nicole Farhi London, Le Ciel Bleu, J.M. Weston. The author an American lawyer who has lived and worked in Japan brings to life a complex and most interesting hero: John Rain, a hard and resourceful man in his 40s with an American mother, a Japanese father, a childhood spent in both countries and a stretch with Special Operations in Vietnam that literally made him what he is today a highly paid freelance assassin. The book begins with Rain arranging the death (on the subway) of a prominent government figure by short-circuiting his pacemaker and making it look like the man died of a heart attack. But Rain's relatively simple life suddenly becomes very complicated when he finds himself involved both romantically and professionally with the dead man's lovely daughter, Midori, a talented jazz pianist. Formidable adversaries a nasty CIA agent from John's Vietnam days; a right-wing guru who uses Shinto priests as spies and yakuza gangsters as enforcers; a tireless old cop seem intent on exposing Rain and eliminating Midori. There are several excellent action scenes, an amusing and touching young computer nerd who is Rain's only reliable ally and, most of all, an intriguing and intimate evocation of Japan's intense love-hate relationship with America.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Picked by the publisher's sales reps as a favorite title of the season and already sold to nine foreign publishers, this debut would seem to have plenty of promise. Protagonist John Rain, of mixed Japanese and American descent, leads a quiet life in Tokyo that masks his real work as a hired assassin.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Fans of that special subset of spy thriller that grafts psychic wounds onto a James Bond-style secret agent cum hit man will find Eisler's first novel right up their dark alley. Hero John Rain makes his living orchestrating the deaths of government officials so they look natural; the first hit in the novel shows Rain planting a microchip on the back of his target, a public works director, in the middle of a crowded Tokyo subway train--the microchip orders the man's pacemaker to malfunction. Rain, as the reader learns over and over again throughout the book, is isolated and alienated--he is ainoko, a mix of American and Japanese parents, and is traumatized by his "half-breed" status and by his experiences in Vietnam and Cambodia. The book is weak in characterization-- Rain is a Bond without charm or depth, whiningly adolescent in his constant reiteration of his problems. But plot and procedure are real standouts here. Rain's killing of the government worker leads him to a coven of agents trying to extract explosive information from the worker's beautiful daughter. And Eisler provides plenty of fascinating detail about the new technologies involved in secret-agent tracking and surveillance. A perfect subway read for spy-story addicts. Connie Fletcher
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[Rain Fall has] got it all: dazzling plot, deft characterization, beaucoup originality. You should dig it. -- James Elroy

Enthusiastic publishers around the world have become enthralled by John Rain, a strikingly fresh new thriller hero destined to be one of the most talked-about of the season. Born of an American mother and a Japanese father, Rain is a businessman based in Tokyo, living a life of meticulously planned anonymity. There are few who know who he is or what he does. Trained by the U.S. Special Forces and a veteran of Vietnam, he is a cool, self-contained loner-and he has built a steady business over the past twenty-five years specializing in death by "natural causes."

After the assassination of a government official in a crowded subway car, Rain's carefully ordered world comes under siege. Agents within and without the international intelligence communities have been circling him for some time and, having connected him to the subway incident, may now have the scent they have been seeking. At the same time, Rain is drawn outside his private world by an alluring jazz pianist, the dead man's daughter, who is the key to the very secrets her father was trying to reveal when he died.

Barry Eisler is an American lawyer who has lived and worked extensively in Japan. He is at work on a second novel featuring John Rain.