These were the dark days for Matthew Scudder. An ex-New York cop, he had drowned his career in booze. Now he was drinking away his life in a succession of seedy establishments that opened early and closed late, reduced to doing paid "favors" for the cronies who gathered with him to worship the bottle. Now, in a sad and lonely place like so many before it, opportunity comes knocking - a chance to help the ginmil's owner recover his stolen doctored financial records; a chance to help out a drinking buddy accused of murdering his wife.
If you had to kill three people to save your best friend's life, would you do it? When John Rain decides to get out of the business, his hand is forced by rogue CIA operative Jim Hilger. Hilger kidnaps Dox, Rain's trusted partner and closest friend, and offers Rain a choice: carry out a final assignment, or bear the responsibility for Dox's murder.
Barry Eisler has been compared to Forsyth, Ludlum, le Carre, Ian Fleming, and Graham Greene. But his latest thriller brings Eisler into a league of his own. When Japanese/American contract killer John Rain learns that his former lover, Midori, has been raising their child in New York, he senses a chance for reconciliation, perhaps even for redemption. But Midori is being watched by Rain's enemies, and his sudden appearance puts mother and child in terrible danger.
No one but Japanese-American assassin John Rain can win the game of cross and double cross he encounters in this new novel of sexy international intrigue in the series. Torn between his past as a soldier and his vocation as a killer, longing for attachment but forced to operate alone, and haunted by the fear that one day there must be a reckoning for the things he has done, John Rain moves like a dark ghost through Tokyo and the other urban landscapes in which his Asian features enable him to operate undetected. His ability to make death appear to have been of "natural causes" keeps his reluctant services in constant demand.
In Rain Storm, Rain has fled to Brazil to escape the killing business and the enemies who have been encircling him. But his knack for making death seem to have been of "natural causes" and his ability to operate unnoticed in Asia continue to create unwelcome demand for his services. His old employer, the CIA, persuades him to take on a high-risk assignment: a ruthless arms dealer supplying criminal groups throughout Southeast Asia.
