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“Graveyard of Memories”: A Talk with Barry Eisler

March 8, 2014 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

2014-03-09-BarryEislerchoose-thumbBarry Eisler’s John Rain novels are the “Tiffany” of assassin-oriented, suspense thrillers. The recently released Graveyard of Memories is a prequel to the other novels in the John Rain series. At the story’s outset, Rain, 20 years old and fresh from Vietnam, is a courier for the CIA. He suddenly finds himself threatened on all sides: he must survive the yakuza (the Japanese mob) and other imminent sources of danger. He falls in love with Sayaka, a beautiful wheelchair-bound young woman. Balancing love and the horror of what he must do to survive, John learns his trade craft to become a master assassin. We witness his unfolding maturity as he attempts to stay alive without totally losing the sensitive, soulful and remorseful aspects of his persona.

Quoting from Graveyard of Memories: “I was too young to know that some memories don’t fade, or age, or die. That the weight of some of what we do accumulates, expands, coheres, solidifies. That life means coming to grips with that ever-present weight, learning how to carry it with you wherever you go.”

Read more on the Huffington Post >>

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Filed Under: About Books, crime, Huffington Post Column Tagged With: assassins, backstory, barry-eisler, character-driven novels, erotica, Game of Thrones, genre fiction, Harlan Coben, House of Cards, James Ellroy, John le Carre, john-rain, Lee Child, literary fiction, Michael Connelly, plot-driven novels, The Sopranos, the-detachment, Walter Mosley

Barry Eisler’s John Rain Thrillers – The Detachment

July 7, 2012 by Mark Rubinstein

I’ve read all the John Rain thrillers over the last few years. They are extremely engrossing. The details of Tokyo and Japanese culture are incredible. Eisler paints pictures of the city and other locales (Europe and the United States) in such a colorful way, it makes you feel you’re actually there.His descriptions of John Rain’s precautionary methods, his shadowy lifestyle, and how Rain carries out his killing assignments are chilling, ingenious, and believable. His relationships with CIA rogues, renegades, and other assassins are drawn with skill and complexity.

Even more complicated are John Rain’s relationships with his lover Midori and with his Mossad agent-lover, Delilah.

In these novels, Eisler got me to experience something I wasn’t certain could happen: I cared deeply about a paid assassin who is a loner and a man without a country and seemingly without a conscience.

The Detachment (John Rain, #7)I recently read The Detachment, the latest John Rain novel, and Eisler managed to keep up the same level of tension and suspense as in the previous stories.

— Mark Rubinstein, author, Mad Dog House (October 2012)
The Detachment

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Filed Under: About Books, Mark Rubinstein, Reviews Tagged With: assassinations, assassins, author-book-reviews, barry-eisler, cia, crime-novels, japan, japanese, john-rain, killers, killings, Mark Rubinstein, mossad, the-detachment, thriller-novels, tokyo

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