Barry Eisler's recent international espionage series ranks with the classics of this genre. John Rain, the main character, a half-Japanese, half-American martial arts assassin, has appeared in four books so far: Rain Fall, Hard Rain, Rain Storm, and Killing Rain. Eisler has recently signed for two more books in the series.
The noirish pall that hangs over this series might, at times, be too nihilistic for some readers not inured in the ways of international espionage thrillers, but the novels are so sensuously written, so elegantly plotted, and so masterfully populated with fully realized characters that they cannot be put down.
My intent in this review, however, is not detailed plot summary, but to look closer at Eisler's storytelling skills, for they elevate the series beyond the normal genre thriller. Eisler carefully builds John Rain as a well-nuanced, classic tragic hero. We learn that from birth, Rain was an outsider born into two cultures but belonging to neither. This rootless sense intensified after his experiences in the Vietnam War. His best friend warned him, "There's no home for us, John. Not after what we've done."
Rain finds some comfort in Tokyo, but the past is never far behind. His involvement with Midori, a multidimensional relationship throughout the series so far, proves most difficult. In the following scene after a troubled meeting with her, Rain seeks sanctuary at his father's graveside in a Tokyo cemetery:
"Hisashiburi, papa," I whispered, addressing him like the young boy I had been when he had died. It's been a long time, papa.
Forgive me father. It has been thirty years since my last confession.
Stop that shit.
"I'm sorry I don't come to visit you more often," I said in Japanese, my voice low. "Or even think of you. There are so many things I keep at a distance because they're painful. Your memory is one of those things. The first of them, in fact."
I looked around. "This is stupid," I said. "You're dead. You're not here."
Then I dropped my head into my hands again. "I wish I could make her understand," I said. "I wish you could help me."
Not only do we see the greatly conflicted side of John Rain, but Eisler shows us the layers of his protagonist's inner conflicts: Japanese attitudes verses American (his mother was Catholic), nihilism verses romanticism, loneliness verses a desire for companionship.
Rain's deepest feelings are for Midori. In this exchange, she explains a central theme in the series, a sense of sorrow as part of the human condition—a sense that John picked up from her music. Midori leads off:
"Do you know mono no aware?"
"I think so. 'The pathos of things,' right?"
"That's the usual translation. I like 'the sadness of being human.'"
I was surprised to find myself moved by the idea. "I hadn't thought of it that way," I said quietly.
Rain agrees, but thinks of Midori's father—who he killed by scrambling his pacemaker. Later, John reflects on mono no aware:
"She had called it 'the sadness of being human.' ...For me, sad has always been a synonym for bitter, and I suspect this will always be so."
Yet, Rain is a cold-blooded killer. Eisler's martial arts descriptions are straight forward, accurate, and painful, causing this reader to wince every time John Rain goes into action:
"I was straddling his leg and holding the ankle in front of me. In one smooth motion I caught it in my right biceps, wrapped the fingers of my left hand around his toes, and clamped down in opposing directions. His ankle broke with a snap like the sound of a mallet on hard wood. Freed of its moorings, the foot arced savagely to the right. Tendons and ligaments tore loose."
The author graphically exposes us to Rain's favorite killing technique in a fight: the neck crank.
Eisler's skill also extends to developing locations as characters—actually, locations act as mirrors of his protagonist. Rain tells us, "I love Tokyo at night." After commenting about its lights, he describes the other side, closer to his soul—the dark side:
"And there is the gloom: alleys lit by nothing more than the fluorescent glow of a lonely vending machine, left leaning against the worn brick like an old man who's given up on everything and wants only to catch his breath, streets lit only by the yellowish pall of lamplights spaced so widely that a passing figure and his shadow seem to evaporate in the dim spaces between."
"Evaporation" is something that Rain tries to do throughout the series, but his own actions prevent his escape.
Trained in law at Cornell Unversity, Eisler joined the CIA and was posted to Japan. Besides his government work, he indulged his passion for Japanese culture and martial arts leaving Japan after three years with Japanese language skills and a black belt in judo earned at Tokyo's renowned Kodokan International Judo Center. He currently trains under Ralph Gracie in Brazilian ju-jitsu.
In the series, John Rain was moving toward the dark side as he was shuttled back and forth between Tokyo and upstate New York (the petulant Anakin Skywalker doesn't even come close). In both countries he was treated harshly as a "half-breed." U.S. Special Operations Forces during the Vietnam War was a "natural" choice. It is there that he learned to focus his anger and become a professional killer. His army career ended when he was betrayed by a CIA officer and forced to kill his best friend.
Rain finds refuge in Tokyo—where, at least physically, he blends in well—as a contract killer specializing in "natural causes" assassinations. Business is good until he contract kills a Japanese official and unexpectedly falls in love with the man's talented jazz pianist daughter, Midori. In Rain Fall, John fights the CIA, the Yakuza (Japanese mob), and the Japanese FBI for the political stability of Japan and an understanding of his feelings for Midori.
The subsequent book, Hard Rain, follows him through further complications in Japan with essentially the same set of characters, but as in any good espionage thriller, the sides constantly change. Rain's life depends on his skills as an independent operative. In Rain Storm, he travels to Rio, Macao, Hong Kong, and Tokyo chasing down a French-Arab arms trader and meeting a beautiful Israeli Mossad agent. In Killing Rain, Mossad hires John to apply his touch to an Israeli traitor making bombs for hire.
Barry Eisler's deft sense of place and character, no non-sense martial arts action, ingenuous plotting, and insightful understanding of the contemporary world makes this series rest comfortably in the company of John le Carre, Graham Greene, and Patricia Highsmith. I look forward to future books in this classic series of espionage and martial arts.
