**4.5 stars**

This book blew me away.

I’m not fond of assassins as main characters so normally I wouldn’t have picked up this book. But it was on sale at Audible and I liked the narrator so I decided to give it a try. And oh boy, I’m so glad I did.
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The story starts a bit slowly but then it gets tremendously exciting, extremely sad and very thought provoking. Why would a man like John Rain – who not a “bad person” – choose a life like this? The answer is not simple or even logical but it’s heartbreaking. There are no apologies or justifications, just the stark reality of the aftermath of war and how soldiers live with themselves afterwards, exemplified by a phrase that is repeated over and over through the book: “There is no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done.”

The sense of loneliness and isolation is so palpable, that sometimes I thought John was walking in a bubble where he was able to observe and hear the muffled sounds of the world while living inextricably apart. The descriptions of Tokyo, noir and bright, added to the atmosphere and made the city a character on its own, a witness and sometimes ally that would conceal John in its masses.

Brian Nishii’s narration was simply brilliant. When I learned that only 2 out of the 7 books in this series are narrated by Mr. Nishii, I almost wept. How could anybody else be the voice of John Rain? Not only is Mr. Nishii Japanese he can properly pronounce all the dialogue in that language (and there's a lot in the book) but he also has that cadence in his speech that tells you immediately where he's from. The voices were just adequate but his performance of John Rain was phenomenal. The emotions were just pitch perfect; you could feel the alienation without any overt sentimentality. I'm so in love with this narration that I'll switch to print for every book that he doesn't narrate.

So it goes without saying that I'll be reading the sequel soon and it's a book I completely recommend.

I'm huge spy/assassin story fan so I have been looking forward to picking this up off my TBR pile. This is Eisler's first novel (from '02) and having read his most recent, Fault Line, I must say it's wonderful to see how far he's come as a writer. Not that Rain Fall is a poor first novel, far from it. I found this first book of the Rain series to be a solid, entertaining read.


Although the character's aren't overly developed (I would like to know a little more about Kawamura's daughter, Midori), Rain is a likable sum of his experiences. Eisler does a nice job of infusing back story throughout the novel, keeping the reader's interest by weaving a little more plot exposition with each back flash. I did find the plot a little far fetched at times (for an assassin, Rain has an astonishing ignorance of the workings of the intelligence communities ~ and what paranoid assassin hands over valuable intel to a soft target civilian???) and at times a little repetitious (his recon around several blocks every time he goes to a meet or a stake out), but at least Rain is consistent. It was almost written like a movie script, so it was no surprise to find out it had been turned into a film (Gary Oldman!); unfortunately, it seems to only have been released in Japan, Rein fôru: Ame no kiba.

Personally, I wasn't crazy about the ending, but not from a writing standpoint. I was routing for Rain on a personal level, but the ending that Eisler wrote is far more realistic. I look forward to reading the rest of the series ...and just maybe I'll try and rent the Japanese movie when it comes out on DVD (praying for English subtitles).

http://girlsjustreading.blogspot.com/...

So... I was trying to think of how to eloquently state everything I was feeling after reading this, then I read my GR friend DG's review, and that pretty much sums it up. Beautiful, sad, exciting, poignant.

I liked how instead of all the usual guns and knives and bloody violence, John was straight forward and simple and if you needed killing he snapped your neck and was done with it. It seemed more realistic that all the flash. All the complicated particulars of his traveling around the city and backtracking and covering his tracks and all the other stealthy-stuff could have felt over the top and boring, but I actually didn't mind it. It was interesting and I liked John's inner voice. Harry was a great addition and I'd like to see more of him.

While the ending with(out) Midori made me sad, it also felt very real and true to the way the story was going. I really hope she turns up again in future books though! I was so so SO glad that Holtzer got what was coming to him. I loved the somewhat anti-climactic way John finally killed him. You know how in movies the hero talks and talks and builds up and you know something will end up going wrong? But John is a professional and he gets the job done because it needs to be done.

The one thing that annoyed me was that after all the crazy over the top SDR and precautions that John took, when he finally decides to hand over the disc to Bulfinch... he just walks away?! You knew they've been following him, why would you think someone wasn't going to try to kill him. I assumed he was gonna follow all the way to at least his apartment!

Great fast-paced, action-filled thriller with a kick-ass assassin as protagonist and set in Japan - what's not to love? Currently re-reading the first few books of this series before finally moving on to the ones I haven't read yet.

I really liked this one, especially the intrigue and hitman stuff. Once the story shifted to become about one particular piece of evidence, it became more about the action. Reading about fights isn't as exciting as watching or participating, so it became a bit mundane. Other than that, it was a good read. I'll be adding the entire series.

The details the author wanted to explain got in the way of the story. I didn't hate the book, just didn't enjoy it.

Barry Eisler is a very intelligent man and is very well qualified to write a political thriller set in Japan but I was a bit disappointed by this book, which is a thriller by numbers, without heart or soul. You don't capture a place by naming its streets and subway stations. You don't redeem a cold-blooded assassin by giving him a taste for whiskey and jazz or by making him fall in love with the beautiful daughter of one of his victims. The story held my interest and I wanted to like it but in the end it left me cold.

Tokyo by night

“Tokyo Killer” é um thriller protagonizado por um ex-agente secreto dos EUA no Cambodja e Vietname – Jack Rain – um assassino profissional, meio americano, meio japonês; frio, sádico, cruel e desprovido de emoções, mas que tem um singular código de ética: "nada de mulheres ou crianças, nenhuma actividade contra terceiros e nenhum outro fornecedor contratado para resolver o problema em mãos..."
Uma emocionante “história” que tem como cenário a cidade de Tóquio, cosmopolita e exótica, povoada por personagens complexas, maioritariamente violentas, que ostentam códigos de conduta e comportamentos dúbios, fomentando um suspense eficiente, com recurso a inúmeros flashbacks para complementar uma narrativa emocionante e repleta de acção.
Num enredo que assenta, essencialmente, numa vertente política, ligada aos partidos políticos, envoltos numa teia de corrupção generalizada, relacionada com as obras públicas e com a máfia (yakuza) da construção civil; vão surgindo inúmeras personagens, directamente relacionadas com as agências de espionagem, numa tentativa desesperada de influência “emocional” em acções de conspiração e chantagem, para manipulação dos decisores políticos ou da opinião pública.
A escrita de Barry Eisler (n. 1964) é eficiente e simples, com recurso a descrições minuciosas do ambiente “noir” de Tóquio, com chuva persistente e atmosfera obscura, complementada por clubes de Jazz e por motéis de 2º categoria, num relato consistente e revelador de uma sociedade japonesa corrupta e dominada pela tecnologia “high tech”.
Um livro emocionante, sem exageros ou redundâncias…

A really pleasant read, I would definitely recommend it.

The story stars slow, but as it moves on, it picks up momentum and is action packed until the end.

The story is narrated in the first person, in a style that has a little hint to the traditional 'noir', which I quite liked.

The description of the different places and surroundings is really detailed, which helps to visualize them in your mind.

John Rain is a very interesting character, with a rich and troubled past, but as it is explained and explored, it really helps to understand some of his troubles and actions. I think the supporting characters are also well developed, with different and rich personalities, creating a strong combination that makes the story interesting at all stages.

A Clean Kill in Tokyo (formerly published as Rain Fall) is the first book in the John Rain series, about an ex-military assassin who is half American and half Japanese. I had met Rain before, peripherally, in the Livia Lone & Killer Collective books, and been intending to check this earlier series out. Finding books 2 and 4 going cheap at a market was the prompt I needed to source Book 1, so used an Audible credit to download the audiobook, which we listened to on a return trip to the Lake. I enjoyed this - particularly the novelty of the Japanese setting, and will happily continue the series.

John Rain specialises in killings for hire that look like the victim died of natural causes. Haunted by his experiences in the Vietnam war, he has a strict code of who he will and won’t target. When he witnesses his latest victim, a corrupt politician, being frisked by a Westerner on the subway as he lies dying, he senses something is amiss. Looking further into the case, Rain gets close to the man’s daughter, a beautiful jazz pianist, and uncovers evidence which threatens powerful people at the heart of the Japanese government. Now the hunter is the hunted, and only exposing the truth can save them both.

This was first published in 2002 but holds up pretty well from a technology and geopolitical point of view. The audiobook is read by the author himself, who has an attractive voice that was easy to listen to, although considering he’s relating a first person past story where most of the dialogue would’ve been in Japanese, he doesn’t sound at all how I would expect Rain to speak.
There’s plenty of action and fight scenes which are fluidly described so I could actually picture them happening - Eisler does this better than the average thriller writer, and it was easy to keep track of what was happening throughout. Rain is rather a cold fish but as we learn his background we understand why he’s ended up that way.

I thought I read that these books were being turned into a TV series featuring Keanu Reeves, but nothing came of it, then discovered that a movie was made of this one in 2009, but even Gary Oldman as Holtzer couldn’t save it from a straight to DVD release!

Grande ritmo e grande capacità di raccontare la citta di Tokyo ed un mondo che Eisler conosce davvero bene: i suoi trascorsi nella CIA traspaiono in ogni pagina della storia.
Non lo conoscevo ma credo proprio che rileggerò anche altro di suo: spy story così credibili e così cariche di ritmo non si trovano tanto facilmente.
Davvero un bel libro.

Доста добър трилър, развиващ се на японска земя и отлично начало на една интересна поредица.

Насладих се на приключенията на Рейн-сан и продължавам с втората книга.

"Моно но ауаре" - жестокостта на живота или болката да си човек...