Product Review

Assassin John Rain is in Washington D.C. on special assignment. This one's not about money or revenge or even pride. It's about protecting the world from a cunningly planned nuclear disaster. A Japanese scientist, Airi Saitou, is using her massive IQ to come up with scenarios to trigger a nuclear meltdown of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Her ingenious solution: Make it look like a natural disaster. Only Rain has a problem. The nation's most subtle assassin has a rule: No women. No children. No non-principals. No B-teams. He is tempted to break that rule until he discovers a piece of missing information. The scientist is being manipulated by a ruthless oil executive whose simple objective is to convince U.S. and Canadian citizens to give up nuclear power in exchange for oil. And a reactor meltdown in far off Japan might just do the trick.

Written in the style and pace of bestselling author Barry Eisler's series of John Rain thrillers, this short story is my humble attempt to participate in Eisler's imagined world.

For you John Rain buffs, this story takes place directly after the action in Eisler's "The Detachment" chapter 32 (the next to the last chapter), and before Rain's mention of the Fukushima reactor meltdown in the final page or two of the novel.

Latham Bradley