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 Barry Eisler's interest in the "forbidden knowledge" now found in his celebrated series about half-American, half-Japanese assassin John Rain began when Eisler was a child, with a biography of Harry Houdini. In the book a cop was quoted as saying, "It's fortunate that Houdini never turned to a life a crime, because if he had he would have been difficult to catch and impossible to hold." Eisler was fascinated that someone could acquire knowledge people weren't supposed to have, knowledge that could make someone dangerous, and that fascination led to a lifelong study of martial arts, including western boxing and wrestling, Japanese judo and karate, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu; a library of books on esoteric subjects such as methods of unarmed killing, lock picking, breaking and entry, spy craft, and other areas that the government would prefer only a select few to know (a library which, by the way, Eisler's wife used to insist remain hidden, but to which she has now granted shelf space because, after all, "it's only for research"); and three years of employment with the CIA's Directorate of Operations.
During his time with the Agency, Eisler was trained in small arms, long arms, hand-to-hand combat, improvised explosive devices, small water craft, air drops to friendly forces, surveillance, counter-surveillance, counter-terrorism, agent recruitment and management, and interrogation and manipulation techniques. He was also placed in a fulltime Japanese language program. In 1993, after leaving the government, Eisler moved to Tokyo to train intensively at the Kodokan International Judo Center, to continue his language studies, and to immerse himself in the country and culture. The city, with its jazz clubs and whiskey bars; its back alleys; its wonderfully varied illumination; and its exotic tastes and scents, catalyzed Eisler's preexisting "forbidden" interests. While commuting to work one morning, a vivid image came to him: two men following another man down Dogenzaka street in Shibuya. He didn't know where the image came from, but he started thinking about it. Who are these men? Why are they following that other guy? Then answers started to come: They're assassins. They're going to kill him. But these answers only led to more questions: why are they going to kill him? What did he do? Who do they work for? Eisler had always enjoyed writing - short stories as a teenager, a foreign policy column for the Cornell Daily Sun while a law student, marketing copy for companies later in life - and the way these two men were following the third felt like a story to him. Eisler started writing, and the character he discovered became John Rain; the manuscript, the novel Rain Fall.
Today Eisler lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area and continues to travel frequently to Japan and other parts of Asia. Rain Storm (Choke Point) won the Barry Award and the Mystery Ink Gumshoe Award for Best Thriller of the Year, and the Rain books have been included in numerous other "Best Of" lists, including those of the San Jose Mercury News, Publishers Weekly, Ft. Myers News-Press, Deadly Pleasures, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The books have been translated into nearly twenty languages and have been optioned for film by Barrie Osborne, Oscar-winning producer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. |
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