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Author: Barry Eisler | Website


Published Works & Book Reviews

Paris Is A Bitch

For most couples, a quiet dinner for two at Auberge de la Reine Blanche on the Ile Saint Louis would be just the thing to smooth out the complications in a romance. But for gorgeous Mossad operative Delilah and trying-to-retire contract killer John Rain, nothing is ever easy, and when Rain sees a crew of hard-looking men setting up outside the restaurant, he realizes someone has been bringing her work home with her. Is it a hit -- or something even worse? When it comes to killing, business and pleasure are the most dangerous mix of all.


The Lost Coast

For Larison, a man off the grid and on the run, the sleepy northern California town of Arcata, gateway to the state's fabled Lost Coast, seems like a perfect place to disappear for a while. But Arcata isn't nearly as sleepy as it seems, and when three locals decide Larison would make a perfect target for their twisted sport, Larison exacts a lifetime of vengeance in one explosive evening.


Rain Fall

Meet John Rain. Assassin. He follows his own code - he needs no one, trusts no one - until betrayal transforms him from hunter into hunted and loner into loyal friend. Haunted by the past Rain kills to order and leaves no trace, but the death at his hand of an old man has unforeseen complications - and soon Rain is trying to protect not just his carefully preserved anonymity but his own life and those of the people he cares for. A stunning, page-turning reinvention of the hitman thriller, "Rain Fall" marks the introduction of a compelling new series character and major new thriller writing career.


Inside Out

Marooned in a Manila jail after a bar fight fatality, black ops soldier Ben Treven is offered a deal by his former commander, Colonel Scott Horton. In exchange for his release, Ben has to find and eliminate Daniel Larison, a rogue operator who has stolen CIA torture tapes to blackmail the U.S. government. But Ben's not the only agent in play-and succeeding will mean surviving CIA hit teams and Blackwater mercenaries after the same objective. He'll also have to outmaneuver Paula Lanier, a smart, sexy FBI agent with her own interest in the tapes-and every intention of getting them before Ben does. With the stakes this high, everyone has an angle-except Ben, who must separate allies from enemies if he wants to stay alive.


Hard Rain

In his critically acclaimed Rain Fall, Barry Eisler introduced half Japanese-half American freelance hit man John Rain, a "dashing and dangerous hero...as likable as he is lethal."* Now Eisler's back. So is Rain, the master of death by "natural causes" whose new target threatens the fragile political balance of an entire country.


Rain Storm

John Rain flees to Brazil to find peace-but inevitably finds himself with a new assignment: take out an arms dealer in Southeast Asia.


Fault Line

Alex Treven has sacrificed everything to make partner in his high-tech law firm. But then the inventor of a technology Alex is banking on is murdered-and Alex narrowly escapes an attack in his house. Running out of time, he calls his estranged brother, Ben, an elite undercover soldier in the United States' war on terror. When Ben receives Alex's frantic call he hurries to San Francisco to help him. Only then does Alex reveal that there's another player who knows of the technology: Sarah Hosseini, a young Iranian American lawyer whom Alex has long secretly desired and whom Ben immediately distrusts. As these three struggle to identify the forces attempting to silence them, Ben and Alex must examine the events that drove them apart-even as Sarah's presence deepens the fault line between them.


Killing Rain

Samurai assassin John Rain returns in the national bestseller.

John Rain has a new employer, the Mossad, which wants him to fix a "problem" in Manila. And a new partner, Dox, whose good-ol'-boy persona masks a sniper as deadly as Rain himself. He also has a new hope: that by using his talents in the service of something good, he might atone for all the lives he has already taken. But when Rain's conscience causes him to botch an assignment, he finds himself as the Mossad's next target...


Requiem For An Assassin

Suppose you had to kill three people to save your best friend's life? For John Rain, it should be easy: three fast hits and disappear. But what if you figured your friend is probably going to die anyway? What if you started to think the whole thing was a setup? And what if you were afraid three was just the beginning? John Rain's going to give it a shot.


The Last Assassin

When freelance assassin John Rain learns that his former lover has been raising their child in New York, he senses a chance for reconciliation, perhaps even redemption. But Midori is being watched by Rain's enemies, and Rain's sudden appearance puts mother and child in mortal danger.


The Ass Is A Poor Receptacle For The Head

Regardless of what you think of their policies, the sad truth is that Democrats suck at selling their ideas to the public. In this hilarious and hard-hitting essay (about 10,000 words, or about 50 pages in paper), best-selling novelist and political blogger Barry Eisler draws on his expertise in narrative, his CIA training in persuasion, his time as an international intellectual property lawyer, and his background in technology marketing to offer Democrats some sound advice on how to improve their communications strategy. Borrowing principles from judo and boxing; using examples from advertising, movies, plays, speeches, and debates; and offering case studies of actual policy rollout successes and disasters, Eisler encourages Democrats to force Republicans to fight on Democratic terms, to use Republicans' own moves against them, and to not just slip a punch, but to hammer their opponents into a rhetorical corner and knock them the hell out.


The Detachment

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 offer: a multi-million dollar payday for the “natural causes” demise of three ultra-high-profile targets who are dangerously close to launching a coup in America.

But the opposition on this job is going to be too much for even Rain to pull it off alone. He’ll need a detachment of other deniable irregulars: his partner, the former Marine sniper, Dox. Ben Treven, a covert operator with ambivalent motives and conflicted loyalties. And Larison, a man with a hair trigger and a secret he’ll kill to protect.

From the shadowy backstreets of Tokyo and Vienna, to the deceptive glitz and glamour of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and finally to a Washington, D.C. in a permanent state of war, these four lone wolf killers will have to survive presidential hit teams, secret CIA prisons, and a national security state as obsessed with guarding its own secrets as it is with invading the privacy of the populace.

But first, they’ll have to survive each other.

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