John Rain is the protagonist in Barry Eisler’s John Rain series of novels. Rain Fall was published in 2003 and renamed A Clean Kill in Tokyo. It was the first novel in the series to feature the series’ title character. The books could be characterized as spy thrillers.
Rain was a member of the Special Forces during the Vietnam War before joining the CIA. He has a deep-seated paranoia, a desire to tie up loose ends by killing, and an inability to trust anyone.
After leaving the CIA, he works as a freelance assassin, which is where the story begins.
The character’s first appearance is in the novel A Clean Kill in Tokyo. It chronicles John Rain’s life after leaving the CIA. He falls in love with Midori, the daughter of his most recent assassination target. His meticulously organized life is turned upside down. This time, he tries to get out of the assassination business for good. The relationship seemed to have altered his entire perspective on life. Getting out of business, however, proves to be difficult.
John Rain Books in order
- Rain Fall/A Clean Kill in Tokyo (2003)
- Hard Rain / Blood from Blood / A Lonely Resurrection (2003)
- Rain Storm (2004)
- Killing Rain / One Last Kill / Redemption Games (2005)
- The Last Assassin / Extremis (2006)
- Requiem For an Assassin / The Killer Ascendant (2007)
- Paris Is A Bitch (2011)
- The Detachment (2011)
- Graveyard of Memories (2014)
- Zero Sum (2017)
- The Killer Collective (2019)
- The Chaos Kind (2021)
Similar authors
- Victoria Selman’s Ziba MacKenzie series follows ex-special forces profiler, Ziba MacKenzie. She helps a dying woman who passes on a cryptic message that pushes her on the search for a killer.
- The Ryan Decker series by Steven Konkoly features a former CIA operative turned mercenary for hire. His specialty is rescuing kidnap victims.
See also: The Dexter series Books in Order.
Most recommended books of the series
- Extremis (John Rain, #5) (4.28 Goodreads score)
- The Killer Ascendant (John Rain, #6) (4.28 Goodreads score)
- The Chaos Kind (John Rain, #11, Livia Lone, #5) (4.27 Goodreads score)
- Redemption Games (John Rain, #4) (4.25 Goodreads score)
- Zero Sum (John Rain, #9) (4.21 Goodreads score)
Awards
Rain Fall, the first book in the series, earned the Gumshoe Award for Best Thriller and the Barry Award for Best Thriller in 2005.
Latest releases in the series
The latest John Rain book is The Chaos Kind. It was released in January 2021.
Movies based on the books
Directed by Max Mannix, the 2009 political thriller “Rain Fall” is the first movie featuring John Rain.
Book summaries
Rain Fall/A Clean Kill in Tokyo (2003)
Half American, half Japanese, an expert in both worlds but at home in neither, John Rain is the best killer money can buy. You tell him who. You tell him where. He doesn’t care about why…Until he gets involved with Midori Kawamura, a beautiful jazz pianist—and the daughter of his latest kill.
Hard Rain / Blood from Blood / A Lonely Resurrection (2003)
All John Rain wants is to get out of the killing business. But with his discretion, his reliability, and his unique talent for death by “natural causes,” no one is willing to let him just retire. So when an old nemesis from the Japanese national police force comes to him with a new job—eliminate Murakami, a killer even more fearsome than Rain himself—he can’t refuse.Aided by an achingly desirable half Brazilian, half Japanese exotic dancer he knows he shouldn’t trust, Rain pursues his quarry through underground no-holds-barred fight clubs, mobbed-up hostess bars, and finally into the heart of a shadow war between the CIA and the yakuza. It’s a war Rain can’t win, but also one he can’t afford to lose—a war where the distinctions between friend and foe and truth and deceit are as murky as the rain-slicked streets of Tokyo.
Rain Storm (2004)
John Rain has disappeared in Brazil to escape the killing business and the enemies encircling him in Japan. But the CIA isn’t willing to lose its premier “natural causes” contract killer, and they force Rain to take on a high-risk assignment: eliminate a ruthless arms dealer operating in Southeast Asia.The upside? Financial, of course, along with the possibility of moral redemption. But first, Rain will have to survive the downside: a second assassin zeroing in on the target; an alluring and dangerous woman with an agenda of her own; the possibility that the entire mission is nothing but an elaborate setup. From the gorgeous beaches of Rio to the glitzy casinos of Macau to the gritty back streets of Hong Kong and Kowloon, Rain becomes a reluctant player in an international game far deadlier and more insidious than any he has encountered before.
Killing Rain / One Last Kill / Redemption Games (2005)
After nearly dying while taking out a target in Hong Kong, Rain has a new employer, The Mossad, which wants him to fix a “problem” in Manila. He also has a new partner, Dox, whose good-ol’-boy persona masks a sniper as deadly as Rain himself. And he has a new hope: that by using his talents in the service of something good, he might atone for all the lives he has taken. But when Rain’s conscience causes him to botch the Manila hit, he finds out the next problem The Mossad wants fixed is him. Is Delilah, his Mossad lover, coming to help him? Or was she sent to finish him off?
The Last Assassin / Extremis (2006)
When Rain learns that his former lover, Midori, has been raising their child in New York, Rain senses a chance for reconciliation, perhaps even for redemption.But Midori and the child are being watched by Rain’s enemies, and Rain’s sudden appearance puts them in terrible danger. To save them, Rain is forced to use the same deadly talents he had been hoping to leave behind. With the help of Tatsu, his one-time nemesis in the Japanese FBI; and Dox, the former Marine sniper whose good ol’ boy persona masks a killer as deadly as Rain himself, Rain races against time to bring his enemies into the open and eliminate them forever.
Requiem For an Assassin / The Killer Ascendant (2007)
Hunted and finally cornered, John Rain faces his deadliest enemy ever: himself.For Rain, “the most charismatic assassin since James Bond” (San Francisco Chronicle), getting out of the life was never going to be easy. But with a new identity in Paris, and the help of his lover, Mossad agent Delilah, he was beginning to leave the killing business behind.And then he receives a message from rogue CIA operative Jim Hilger: We have your friend Dox. Do as we tell you, or he dies.For a professional like Rain, the choice ought to be easy: do the job—a series of three hits—and save his friend and partner. But how does Rain know Hilger won’t kill Dox, anyway, once the assignment is complete? How does he know each of the hits isn’t simultaneously a setup for Rain himself? Most of all, how can he control the killing rage Hilger’s lethal game of extortion reignites inside him?From the deceptively tranquil beaches of Bali, to the backstreets and boulevards of Paris, to the urban canyons of Silicon Valley and New York and the old killing fields of Vietnam, Rain must grapple with his age, his enemies, and, most of all, with the killer inside himself in a battle not even Rain can hope to survive intact.
Paris Is A Bitch (2011)
For most couples, a quiet dinner for two at Auberge de la Reine Blanche on the Ile Saint Louis would be just the thing to smooth out the complications in a romance. But for gorgeous Mossad operative Delilah and trying-to-retire contract killer John Rain, nothing is ever easy, and when Rain sees a crew of hard-looking men setting up outside the restaurant, he realizes someone has been bringing her work home with her. Is it a hit — or something even worse? When it comes to killing, business and pleasure is the most dangerous mix of all.
The Detachment (2011)
When legendary black ops veteran Colonel Scott “Hort” Horton tracks Rain down in Tokyo, Rain can’t resist the offer: a multi-million dollar payday for the “natural causes” demise of three ultra-high-profile targets who are dangerously close to launching a coup in America.But the opposition on this job is going to be too much for even Rain to pull it off alone. He’ll need a detachment of other deniable irregulars: his partner, the former Marine sniper, Dox. Ben Treven, a covert operator with ambivalent motives and conflicted loyalties. And Larison, a man with a hair trigger and a secret he’ll kill to protect.From the shadowy backstreets of Tokyo and Vienna, to the deceptive glitz and glamour of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and finally to a Washington, D.C. in a permanent state of war, these four lone wolf killers will have to survive presidential hit teams, secret CIA prisons, and a national security state as obsessed with guarding its own secrets as it is with invading the privacy of the populace.But first, they’ll have to survive each other.
Graveyard of Memories (2014)
What makes a legendary assassin? For John Rain, it was the lessons of love, war, and betrayal he learned in Tokyo in 1972.Fresh from the killing fields of Southeast Asia, Rain works as a bagman under the watchful eye of his CIA handler, delivering cash to corrupt elements of the Japanese government. But when a delivery goes violently wrong, Rain finds himself in the crosshairs of Japan’s most powerful yakuza clan. To survive, Rain strikes a desperate deal with his handler: take out a high-profile target in the Japanese government in exchange for the intel he needs to eliminate his would-be executioners.As Rain plays cat and mouse with the yakuza and struggles to learn his new role as contract killer, he also becomes entangled with Sayaka, a tough, beautiful ethnic Korean woman confined to a wheelchair. But the demands of his dark work are at odds with the longings of his heart—and with Sayaka’s life in the balance, Rain will have to make a terrible choice.
Zero Sum (2017)
Returning to Tokyo in 1982 after a decade of mercenary work in the Philippines, a young John Rain learns that the killing business is now controlled by Victor, a half-Russian, half-Japanese sociopath who has ruthlessly eliminated all potential challengers. Victor gives Rain a choice: kill a government minister or die a grisly death. But the best route to the minister is through his gorgeous Italian wife, Maria, a route that puts Rain on a collision course not only with Victor but with the shadowy forces behind the Russian’s rise to dominance—and the longings of Rain’s own conflicted heart.It’s a battle between kingpin and newcomer, master and apprentice, a zero-sum contest that can only end with one man dead and the other the world’s foremost assassin.
The Killer Collective (2019)
When a joint FBI–Seattle Police investigation of an international child pornography ring gets too close to certain powerful people, sex-crimes detective Livia Lone becomes the target of a hit that barely goes awry—a hit that had been offered to John Rain, a retired specialist in “natural causes.”Suspecting the FBI itself was behind the attack, Livia reaches out to former Marine sniper Dox. Together, they assemble an ad hoc group to identify and neutralize the threat. There’s Rain. Rain’s estranged lover, Mossad agent and honeytrap specialist Delilah. And black ops soldiers Ben Treven and Daniel Larison, along with their former commander, SpecOps legend Colonel Scot “Hort” Horton.Moving from Japan to Seattle to DC to Paris, the group fights a series of interlocking conspiracies, each edging closer and closer to the highest levels of the US government.With uncertain loyalties, conflicting agendas, and smoldering romantic entanglements, these operators will have a hard time forming a team. But in a match as uneven as this one, a collective of killers might be even better.
The Chaos Kind (2021)
Assistant US Attorney Alondra Diaz hates traffickers. And she’s determined to put one of America’s most powerful financiers, Andrew Schrader, in prison forever for his crimes against children.But Schrader has videos implicating some of the most powerful members of the US national security state. To eliminate Diaz, the powers that be bring in a contractor: Marvin Manus, an implacable assassin whose skills have been forged in intelligence, the military, and the hardest prisons.Enter former Marine sniper Dox and black-ops veteran Daniel Larison with an unusual assignment: not to kill Diaz, but to keep her alive.A lot of players are determined to acquire the videos and the blackmail power they represent. But with Seattle sex-crimes detective Livia Lone, “natural causes” killer John Rain, and ex-Mossad honey-trap specialist Delilah, the good guys might just have a chance.They’re not going to play by anyone else’s rules. They’re not going to play by any rules at all. They want a different kind of fight. The chaos kind.
