HARD RAIN

Written by Barry Eisler & Reviewed by Detective Dru

This pithy patchwork of prose appears to be first person POV and in familiar Japan for a contract on a yakuza. John Rain the half Asian assassin befriends him and begins working out with him at the gym, then eliminates him when they are alone working out and he goads yakuza into trying to bench more weight than ever, but he uses the bar to suffocate him and crack his ribs. Then Rain leaves so it looks like a natural accident. Honestly unimpressive writing this chapter. It made a tension filled situation feel more melodramatic than intense. We shall see.

Chapter two doubled down on the meh. Tatsu shows up unannounced at some jazz club Rain is at. The conversation is tumultuous and Rain is hung up on how Tatsu found him. Tatsu is vague, but gives Rain some envelope with a target. Rain realizes he must leave Japan or else he will always be looking over his shoulder.  Not feeling this story at all. Very uninteresting and the first person POV is bothersome for some unspecific reason. Rain just doesn’t give off compelling energy.  No nonsense cold calculating protagonists like these are appealing because of their oversimplified approach to complexity.  As Judi Dench once eloquently put it, “you’re a blunt instrument.”  There’s a reason Lee Child switched the Jack Reacher novels from first person to third person right away in book two, likely sharing the same opinion.

Anyway, Rain meets with Harry his tech guy from the last book. Harry has a girlfriend now, but it sounds like she may be a honeypot. How convenient. And Harry presents Rain with a letter that Midori wrote him regarding Rain’s “death” it appears. Mostly references to the previous book in this chapter, none of which are remembered.  Rain doubts Harry’s naivete and visits the club where his new gal works. She’s a dancer at a strip club and after chatting up some other dancer, Rain decides to investigate Yukiko further.

Something about chapter five got more engaging? Rain contacts Harry the next day and makes him do two hours of SDR before meeting to flush out any tails. Rain isolates two tails: a CIA guy working at US embassy tasked with locating Rain thru Harry because the government wants Rain for some type of work. The other guy is a diplomatic bodyguard. Rain kills him to intimidate the CIA guy and warns him not to tail anymore. Sounds like the work being asked will be to save economies or some other silly thing. Then Rain sees Harry afterward to plant a seed of doubt about Yukiko who he still doesn’t trust. 

Chapter six returned to the familiar meh. Pages are spent describing Rain’s false ID, a guy he killed but kept alive digitally for ID theft purposes.  He plans to use this ID in Brazil. He then visits his favorite places around Japan before he leaves, then calls Tatsu and says he wants to meet up.  Rain meets with Tatsu and they have uninspiring banter. Tatsu wants him to kill this mma guy that’s an upstart for the weightlifter yakuza guy’s old job that they literally just had Rain kill. So the motive/story beats aren’t really doing it right now. And the reason Rain says yes to the “favor” that will ground him and keep him from absconding to Brazil is that he figures Tatsu is the kinda guy you want as an ally and not an enemy. More meh it seems.

The target is Ryu. Rain joins some dojo using the guy he killed as a reference. He breaks some dude’s ankle so they respect him, then some yakuza shows and invites him to fight club the next night. Not sure if this guy was his target or not, as it’s a lot of unfamiliar names to keep straight.

Part Two

Kicking off Part two is chapter nine, an internal blah chapter. First kill of Rain’s was some young VC he shot near the Laotian border. How ordinary.  Murakawi Ryu is the current target and he’s the one that invited Rain to the fight club. He’s there now and Ryu shows up to tell Rain he’s fighting first. It’s Adonis, the friend of the guy whose ankle Rain broke. Rain easily kills him and Ryu invites him to make “real” money. Rain accepts and sounds like they’re heading to Damask Rose, the club Harry’s girlfriend Yukiko works at.

Ryu requests Yukiko and Rain requests Naomi in order to head her off at the pass since he came under a different name last time when he chatted her up. There’s a lap dance and confirmation that the place is bugged. Rain waits for Naomi at her place like a stalker. They do what agents do and she implies they compile kompromati at the club and Yukiko is actually kinda dangerous. Rain is convinced they’re tricking Harry and that he’s in danger.

Rain and Tatsu meet. They deduce the fight club is to qualify and train assassins for the yakuza in anticipation of some sort of Japanese economic revolution. Rain says he won’t kill Ryu because it’s too difficult and risky. Tatsu does not appear to take it well.  Rain and Harry debate Yukiko again. Harry’s still not buying it so Rain promises himself he’s done with Harry because he’s a liability due to whatever Yukiko is up to with Harry.

Part Three

Rain goes home and runs into Midori (somehow).  She’s from last book. He immediately admits to killing her father. Rain deduces that Tatsu tipped her off to let her find him. She previously thought Rain was dead. After they argue, Rain visits the dad’s grave and whines about Midori. Pretty boring presentation of inner conflict.

Harry is dead. He fell off a roof. Rain meets with Tatsu to inform him, they decide to work together to get Murakami Ryu the next time he shows up at the dojo. They’ll make it seem like resisting arrest went awry in order to justify the killing.  Ryu finally shows at the dojo, only to confront Rain about his alias. Rain kills one bodyguard and injures the other. Tatsu and his cops arrive, but Ryu kills one and escapes out the back.

Kanezaki, the CIA tail from earlier, magically appears and he now thinks that the CIA operation he mentioned during their first meeting is a trap. It’s been shut down for months, but Kanezaki is still running it…likely intended to be a fall guy when it comes to light a la Oliver North. They meet with Tatsu and they compare notes. Yamaoto from the first book is the likely centerpiece culprit here, providing yet another unfulfilling beat in an otherwise bland story.

Tatsu lies to Kanezaki and makes him think his paranoia is valid because they found someone surveying him. Wasn’t true, Tatsu just wanted to build trust. Tatsu then gives intel to Tain on how to confront Biddle, Kanezaki’s boss at CIA. Rain then stakes out Yukiko at her place. He confronts her about Harry, she won’t talk, so Rain breaks her neck. The amount of excessive killing by the protagonist and excessive amount of flat secondary characters by the author is an undeniable burden to this story.

Rain meets Biddle and confirms this operation crepuscular and confirms it stopped six months ago. He wants Rain to take out Kanezaki!! Getting in the weeds now. There’s suddenly another player. His name is Tanaka and he’s rich. Tatsu and Rain visit and interrogate him and he gives up Biddle and Yamaoto as his handlers for the money he’s been providing to Kanezaki since the operation ended six years ago. But it sounds like this is all Biddle’s work and that all of the set up to pin the fallout doesn’t land if Kanezaki is dead. So if Kanezaki is eliminated, then no one will care if they see Japanese bureaucrats secretly meeting with him. So now Biddle is the baddie? Plus Murokawa is still supposed to be the priority. Typical mediocre espionage, the third act reset is collapsing under all the lazy Susan work required to justify all the gratuitous tension that littered the book. Not liking where this is going…

Naomi now contacts him out of nowhere via his pager and asks for a meet. Then one of Murakami’s bodyguards appears out of nowhere and Rain kills him. Then ANOTHER bodyguard shows and Rain kills him and he has a cell that Murakami calls at that exact moment to tell him to meet him out front…which just so happens to be mere feet from where Rain is currently standing. Tokyo is apparently a very very small town. Rain kills Murakami’s dog with pepper spray squirts and shatters Murakami’s ankle. They fight more and Rain kills him with baton bludgeoning. And then Naomi’s place is still mere feet from their death match! And yup gee whadda ya know, Murakami put Naomi up to calling the meet. Now that he’s dead though she’s planning to flee to Salvador. Rain promises to find her but he says no internally. Because that’s how Harry and Midori type things happen.

Chapter twenty two is a glorified retcon.  Blah blah all this chatter about who has receipts on who, mostly Biddle and Yamaoto.  Rain meets with Biddle and smashes his ankle too - original - then Biddle blames everything on the USA because they don’t want Japanese reform because they owe so much debt to Japan. Really boring stuff. Then Rain walks away and how exciting of a meeting!

Oh and FYI all of the receipts being chatted about earlier were all shredded by Kanezaki, so all the threats just disappeared. What a lovely waste of time for all parties involved.  Looks like the future forecast will be drought like conditions because there’s a 100% chance of no more Rain.