Barry Eisler

#2

"In Hard Rain, Eisler's second novel, the lethal assassin John Rain is back. Half Japanese, half American, raised in both countries but at home in neither, Rain is trying to leave his life as a freelance assassin, but no one will just let him retire. With his military discipline and martial arts skills, and his talent for making death appear to have been of "natural causes," he is a potential asset - and a threat - to everyone." "After killing a CIA officer who had hunted him halfway around the globe, Rain plans his own disappearance, hoping to find the peace that has eluded him. But then his old nemesis from the Japanese FBI comes to him asking for one last 'favor': find and eliminate a killer at large, a creature without compassion or conscience." "It's soon clear that it is not just Japan's fragile balance of political power that's threatened, but also the lives of Rain's few friends, including a love from his past. To protect them, Rain must pursue his quarry into the heart of a war between the CIA and the Japanese mafia, where the distinctions between friend and foe, truth and deceit, are as murky as the rain-slicked streets of Tokyo."--Jacket. After killing a CIA officer who had hunted him halfway around the globe. John Rain goes underground, hoping to disappear, seeking the peace that has eluded him.

#3

Silicon Valley: the eccentric inventor of a new encryption application is murdered in an apparent drug deal. Istanbul: a cynical undercover operative receives a frantic call from his estranged brother, a patent lawyer who believes he'll be the next victim. And on the sun-drenched slopes of Sand Hill Road, California's nerve center of money and technology, old family hurts sting anew as two brothers who share nothing but blood and bitterness wage a desperate battle against a faceless enemy.Alex Treven has sacrificed everything to achieve his sole ambition: making partner in his high-tech law firm. But then the inventor of a technology Alex is banking on is murdered, the patent examiner who reviewed the innovation dies--and Alex himself narrowly escapes an attack in his own home. Off balance, out of ideas, and running out of time, he knows that the one person who can help him is the last person he'd ever ask: his brother.Ben Treven is a military liaison element, an elite undercover soldier paid to "find, fix, and finish" high-value targets in the United States global war on terror. Disenchanted with what he sees as America's culture of denial and decadence, Ben lives his detached life in the shadows because the black ops world is all he really knows--and because other than Alex, whom he hasn't spoken to since their mother died, his family is long gone. But blood is thicker than water, and 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 are forced to examine the events that drove them apart--even as Sarah's presence, and her own secret yearnings, deepens the fault line between them.A full-throttle thriller that is both emotionally and politically charged, Fault Line centers on a conspiracy that has spun out of the shadows and onto the streets of America, a conspiracy that can be stopped by only three people--three people with different worldviews, different grievances, different motives. To survive the forces arrayed against them, they'll first have to survive one another.From the Hardcover edition.