Rain is a Vietnam War veteran who served with the Special Forces; he was later recruited by the CIA, but by the time he appears in the first of the “John Rain” novels, “Rain Fall”, he is working “freelance,” offering his assassination services to any client willing to follow his three rules: 1) No women or children, 2) No secondary team working separately on an assassination Rain is handling, 3) Principal actors only (i.e., no hits on family members, etc., in order to “send a message”).
Rain’s years of training in the Special Forces, CIA, and as an assassin for hire manifest themselves in a deep-seated paranoia, an inability to trust anyone, and the drive to eliminate any loose ends (usually through killing) that may leave him vulnerable to payback or revenge.
Name: John Rain. Vocation: Assassin. Speciality: Natural Causes. Base of operations: Tokyo. Availability: Worldwide. Half American, half Japanese, expert in both worlds but at home in neither, John Rain is the best killer money can buy. You tell him who. You tell him where. He doesn’t care about why… Until he gets involved with Midori(…)
Barry Eisler’s half-breed freelance assassin John Rain returns to Tokyo for a second outing in Hard Rain, the sequel to Eisler’s stunning 2002 debut, Rain Fall. Once again Rain is working with, or at least parallel to, Tatsu, a wily veteran of Japan’s FBI equivalent, who aims to cleanse the Japanese government of its systemic(…)
Critics praised Barry Eisler’s first two novels, Rain Fall and Hard Rain, calling Japanese-American John Rain, the cynical, romantic, conscientious assassin, “one of the most memorable characters in recent thrillers” (San Jose Mercury News) and “a remarkable creation, a multifaceted killer with the soul of a poet” (Mystery Ink). In Rain Storm, Rain has fled(…)
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(…)
Even for an average citizen, a love triangle is dangerous business. For assassin John Rain–“one of the most compelling lead characters in the genre” (USA Today)–it’s going to be downright deadly Even for an average citizen, a love triangle is dangerous business. For assassin John Rain–“one of the most compelling lead characters in the genre”(…)
Hunted and finally cornered, John Rain faces his deadliest enemy ever: himself. For Rain, “the most charismatic assassin since James Bond” (San Francisco Chronicle), getting out of the life was never going to be easy. But with a new identity in Paris, and the help of his lover, Mossad agent Delilah, he was beginning to(…)
John Rain is back. And ‘the most charismatic assassin since James Bond’ (San Francisco Chronicle) is up against his most formidable enemy yet: the nexus of political, military, media, and corporate factions known only as the Oligarchy. When legendary black ops veteran Colonel Scott ‘Hort’ Horton tracks Rain down in Tokyo, Rain can’t resist the(…)
What makes a legendary assassin? For John Rain, it was the lessons of love, war, and betrayal he learned in Tokyo in 1972. Fresh from the killing fields of Southeast Asia, Rain works as a bagman under the watchful eye of his CIA handler, delivering cash to corrupt elements of the Japanese government. But when a(…)
What makes a legendary assassin? For John Rain, it was the lessons of love, war, and betrayal he learned in Tokyo in 1972. Fresh from the killing fields of Southeast Asia, Rain works as a bagman under the watchful eye of his CIA handler, delivering cash to corrupt elements of the Japanese government. But when(…)