Barry Eisler's Backstory

You can’t imagine the impact of knowing that the most precious thing over which you have full control – your own life – is useless as barter or bribe to save the life of your child.

Thus does John Rain learn at the end of Killing Rain, the fourth book in the award-winning series about the half-American, half-Japanese freelance assassin, that he fathered a son during his brief and doomed relationship with Japanese jazz pianist Midori Kawamura.  Midori and the child are living in New York City, and are being watched by Yamaoto, a powerful enemy of Rain's from earlier in the series, who is hoping to use them to gain access to Rain.

The news throws Rain's world into turmoil.  Does the existence of a child mean some slim chance for reconciliation with Midori, whose father Rain killed in the opening pages of Rain Fall?  How can he see them if they're being watched by Yamaoto, and does he dare take the chance?  And what does the news portend for Rain's relationship with Delilah, the beautiful Mossad agent he met in Rain Storm, the third book in the series, with whom he has since been drawing closer and closer despite their sometimes conflicting professional affiliations?

I suppose it was inevitable that issues of parenthood would creep into the series; after all, it wasn't so long ago that I became a parent myself.  I found myself wondering what Rain would do if he learned he had a child, and even more so by how far he would go if the child were in danger.  But not just any danger.  It had to be danger of Rain's own making.

Why?  First, because one of the themes of the book, indeed of the series, is the inevitability of the continuing consequences of violence.  Second, because the plot would be tighter and more satisfying if Rain caused the problem he now has to solve.  Finally, and most importantly, because the stakes are dramatically higher if the situation is Rain's fault.

In the first four Rain books, the stakes, generally speaking, are Rain's life.  In The Last Assassin, Rain's life, although in constant danger, hardly matters to him -- in fact, he would gladly trade it to protect his child.  And the harder Rain tries, the worse the danger becomes, such that you can think of the plot line of the book as a series of increasingly desperate double-or-nothing bets Rain is forced to gamble, with his son's life and his own soul the stakes of the game.

My interest in those stakes and what a parent would do if forced to play for them became first the backbone, and finally the heart of the new book.  The flesh, as ever, is suspense and action; realistic tradecraft and other operator tactics; evocative locations, in this case Barcelona, New York, Tokyo, and Wajima (yes, I had to do all the on-site research again, but I try not to complain... anything for my art, you know); steamy sex; most of all, a fascinating ensemble of characters led by Rain himself, a "multifaceted killer with the soul of a poet" (Mystery Ink Online).

The Rain who will take you through this book isn't the same man we met (seemingly so long ago!) in Rain Fall.  Rain is aging, for one thing, and as he does so his priorities begin to shift.  His outlook changes, too, in reaction to the loves he's known and losses he's endured throughout the series.  Most of all, Rain isn't the loner he was, nor does he want to be.  But building a clan -- his lover Delilah, his partner and friend, ex-Marine sniper Dox -- presents its own dangers to a man used to freedom of maneuver.  As Rain notes in the opening of the book when he reconnoiters Barcelona before meeting Delilah there, "Barcelona was unfamiliar, but the real territory I was trying to navigate isn't marked on any map."  That new territory, and Rain's attempt to find his way safely through it, is the story of The Last Assassin.  I hope you'll enjoy it.

You can learn more at my website:  http://www.barryeisler.com

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[Robert]

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