"I insist on only a few questions. Is the target a man? I don't work against women or children. Have you retained anyone else to solve this problem? I don't want my operation getting tripped up by someone's idea of a B-team, and if you retain me, it's an exclusive. Is the target a principal? I solve problems directly, like the soldier I once was, not by sending messages through uninvolved third parties... "
"I'm not a mercenary, although I was nothing more than that once upon a time. And although I do in a sense live a life of service, I am no longer samurai, either... I am a realist now."
Enthusiastic publishers around the world have become enthralled by John Rain, a strikingly fresh new thriller hero and a character 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. 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." He is also a man struggling with his own divided nature: Japanese/American; soldier/assassin; samurai/ronin.
From its richly atmospheric and ominous opening pages—in which we witness the death of a stranger in a crowded subway car—Rain's carefully ordered world begins to unravel. Unknown agents from within and without the international intelligence communities have been circling him for years and, having connected him to the subway job, 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 that her father died trying to reveal.
The Rain books have been translated into over a dozen languages and have been optioned for film.
Putnam US hardcover July 2002 0399149104
Signet US mass market paperback July 2003 045120915X
Penguin UK mass market paperback April 2003 014101010X
