Hard Rain FROM THE PUBLISHER
"In Hard Rain, Eisler's second novel, the lethal assassin John Rain is back. Half Japanese, half American, raised in both countries but at home in neither, Rain is trying to leave his life as a freelance assassin, but no one will just let him retire. With his military discipline and martial arts skills, and his talent for making death appear to have been of "natural causes," he is a potential asset - and a threat - to everyone." "After killing a CIA officer who had hunted him halfway around the globe, Rain plans his own disappearance, hoping to find the peace that has eluded him. But then his old nemesis from the Japanese FBI comes to him asking for one last 'favor': find and eliminate a killer at large, a creature without compassion or conscience." It's soon clear that it is not just Japan's fragile balance of political power that's threatened, but also the lives of Rain's few friends, including a love from his past. To protect them, Rain must pursue his quarry into the heart of a war between the CIA and the Japanese mafia, where the distinctions between friend and foe, truth and deceit, are as murky as the rain-slicked streets of Tokyo.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Rain Fall (2002), Eisler's first book about Japanese-American Vietnam vet John Rain, a hired assassin for government agencies in Tokyo and Washington, worked so well that the author wisely decided to keep all the elements intact in this captivating follow-up. Once again, the nightscape of Tokyo is painted in beautifully dark tones, scored to the live jazz of the clubs where Rain drinks from a menu of expensive single malt whiskeys. Once again, Rain knows everything about the arts of killing and avoiding surveillance-from the sound a man's ribs make when he's crushed to death trying to lift too much weight to how to use a container of very hot tea to ruin a would-be pursuer's day. Once again Rain has to decide whether any of the people he's working for-the shrewd Tatsu, a veteran agent of Japan's FBI who seems to be dedicated to battling high-level corruption; various shady American CIA agents-are to be trusted. And once again, Rain realizes how alone he really is, despite the promise of love and companionship from a couple of very interesting women. "I had understood even as a child that to be half Japanese is to be half something else, and to be half something else is to be... chigatte. Chigatte, meaning `different,' but equally meaning `wrong.' The language, like the culture, makes no distinction." The plot itself is a complicated one about a CIA scheme called Crepuscular, designed to clean up-or possibly further corrupt-Japan's tangled mess of business and politics. Eisler acknowledges the help of experts in many areas, but it's his own impressive literary skills that make his John Rain such a fascinating, touching and wholly believable character. Author tour. (July 14) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
After triumphing with his debut, Rain Fall, Eisler is back to put half-Japanese, half-American protagonist John Rain through his paces. Here, freelance assassin Rain's devout wish to quit the business is not granted. With huge foreign sales. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
AudioFile
John Rain, assassin extraordinaire, is back on the job, despite his desire to begin a new life. Rain is fluent in Japanese, and his half-Japanese, half-American background, with some help from plastic surgery, allows him to pass as Japanese in this multilayered plot involving Japanese mobsters, politicians, and Japan's equivalent of the FBI. Maintaining suspense and tension throughout, Dick Hill manages to capture a rhythm of speech that mirrors Japanese, lending authentic voices to the characters. He moves easily between English and Japanese, reading in a natural style. Modulating well and transitioning smoothly to the description between the action sequences, Hill moves into dramatic mode only when appropriate. It takes some attentiveness to sort out who is who among the many Japanese characters and what's going on, but in the end the listener is rewarded by a very good performance. S.S.R. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
No matter how hard this assassin tries to get out, they pull him back in. John Rain is a half-American, half-Japanese hit man (Rain Fall, 2002), but there's little reason to know anything about him, not even his name, as he so completely fulfills the requirements of his particular type. Because he's a Hit Man, we know that he experienced violence at a young age (serving in Vietnam) and later went on his own as a freelance killer With Scruples, of course (no women, no children, and no secondary victims, only the principal). He leads what seems to be a pretty nice life in Japan: luxury high-rise apartment, plenty of disposable cash, a flexible work schedule that leaves him oodles of time to hang out in classy jazz joints and dream about retiring to Brazil. But, naturally, real life intrudes on John's idyll, this time in the form of Tatsu, a policeman friend who wants some help (he'll pay, of course) investigating a man who's running a circuit of illegal underground fights (no real suspense on whether martial arts master John will eventually be called upon to take part in one of those fights). At the same time, the CIA, which still has a grudge with John from his previous outing, approaches him about helping with a program charmingly called Crepuscular, which involves taking a high-speed detour around the corruption grinding the Japanese economy to a halt by taking out impediments to reform. It's unfortunate that Eisler has to introduce a story, actually, because there's really nothing to the novel but Rain. Hard-boiled down to the ice-cold core of his survival-oriented soul, he's not much more than a machine, but expertly engineered at that, and fascinating to watch in action. He'll likelydevelop a decent-sized and loyal following with this series. Slick, moody stuff, with a plot that slips out of memory even as the pages turn. Author tour. Agents: Nat Sobel, Judith Weber/Sobel Weber
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