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A Tokyo tale of spies, killers and suspense

by Don Kazak Rain Fall, by Barry Eisler; G.P, Putnam's Sons; 309 pp.; $24.95

John Rain is half American, half Japanese. He's a trained killer of the most subtle sort: he makes people die without any sign that they have been murdered, making their deaths look natural.

He does this on contract several times a year for a shadowy Japanese government official who he has never met.

But he may have been killing the wrong people all these years. And he has no idea who he is really working for.

John Rain is the good guy.

Menlo Park author Barry Eisler has written a suspense yarn that is a page-turner with some great plot twists and reverses. Read this and, like John Rain, you may end up looking over your shoulder too.

"Rain Fall" has already enjoyed success in Japan and is being translated into other languages, which means this could be a big hit, maybe even with the ubiquitous "soon to be a major motion picture" to follow.

The book feels like it was written for the screen, bringing out echoes of the great "Three Days of the Condor," the Robert Redford-Faye Dunaway classic thriller. Like "Rain Fall," the central characters in "Condor" kept getting double-crossed and didn't know who to trust.

The difference is that "Rain Fall" has a lot more bodies falling, fatally and otherwise. John Rain is a martial-arts whiz, in addition to being what the British would call a silent killer. Rain is constantly getting into fixes with no way out, surrounded by big guys with guns. Except there's always a way out, of course.

The Rain character is sympathetic to the extent that a cold-blooded killer can be sympathetic. It isn't until later that we learn that the Tokyo wet-work is a mere walk in the park for Rain compared to his former life as a Special Forces soldier in Vietnam.

Rain is on the run for much of the book, and being on the run is maybe the strongest part of "Rain Fall." The reader gets to know Tokyo vicariously, the different neighborhoods and districts, the sights, sounds and even smells of the place.

The opening chapter is an eye-opening account of what a Tokyo rush hour is like, streets teeming with people shoulder-to-shoulder and subway cars so jammed that if you died, you'd die standing up, as the old spiritual song goes.

The city is vividly drawn, down to the weary businessmen and rebellious young girls with tinted hair. Here's one passage from "Rain Fall," describing a Tokyo district:

"Roppongi is a cocktail composed of Tokyo's brashest foreign and domestic elements, with sex and money giving the concoction its punch. It's full of Western hostesses who came to Japan thinking they were going to be models but who found themselves trapped in something else, selling risque conversation and often more to their sarariman customers, striding along in self-consciously stylish clothes and high heels that accentuate their height, their haughtiness meant to signify success and status but often indicating something closer to desperation; stunning Japanese girls, their skin perfectly salon-tanned, streaked hair worn long and straight down their backs, like folded wings of some hungry bird of prey, on the make for rich boyfriends who for the promise of sex or simply the opportunity to be seen with such prizes in public will give them Chanel suits and Vuitton bags and the other objects that they crave; swarthy foreigners selling controlled substances that might or might not be what they claim; preposterously elderly female pimps tugging at the elbows of passers-by, trying to get them to choose a 'companion' from a photo album; people walking fast, as though they are going somewhere important, or posing nonchalantly, as though they're waiting to meet a celebrity; everyone hungry and on the make, a universe of well-adorned predators and prey."

Eisler writes from his strengths, since he lived and worked in Japan for five years. He also studied judo while there, and the description of the elaborate judo moves will be gravy to any martial-arts fan, although a bit hard to follow for the rest of us.

There is a whole lot of fighting going on, which makes for a good thriller.

But it's the quieter moments that have more appeal, especially with the finely drawn characters of Midori, the female jazz pianist Rain ends up on the run with, and Harry, a quirky electronics genius and oddball helper.

The three get into more fixes that can be counted, and the ending may be a bit of a stretch, but one suspends belief in thrillers like this, just as when we walk into movie theaters.

Eisler also has a feel for writing about how music sounds, not an easy thing to do. Here he is describing the first time John Rain hears Midori play piano with her jazz trio:

"I felt the notes zigzagging playfully away from me, and then I grabbed on and let them pull me from the mood that was rising in me like black waters. I hung on to the music, the taste of Cao Lila in my throat, the melody in my ears, until Midori's hands seemed to blur, until her profile was lost in her hair, until the heads I saw around me in the semidarkness and cigarette haze were rocking and hands were tapping tables and glasses, until her hands blurred faster and then stopped, leaving a moment of perfect silence to be filled with a burst of applause."

In the press materials distributed with review copies, Eisler said the book is being well-received in Japan despite the fact that its main character is half American. He also noted that people there were taken by his description of how widespread government and business corruption is in Japan. Makes one wonder what they have for newspapers and newspaper reporters over there.

Japan has been reeling from recession after recession throughout the 1990s and is not out of the woods yet. But "Rain Fall" depicts Tokyo as a city bursting with life, with purpose (however twisted at times), and with the comfortable sameness of routine for many.

"Rain Fall" is a debut novel, and one can't help wonder about a sequel, especially since Midori winds up . . . well, that would be spoiling it, right? E-mail Don Kazak at dkazak@paweekly.com