All that aside, I really dig those testosterone-charged, shoot-em-up, slice-em-and-dice-em-every-which-way thrillers.

They can’t get too gory for me. Think of the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child or the Nicholas Linnear thrillers by Eric Van Lustbader. Graphic evidence of a wanton disregard for human life. Multitudes of dead bodies strewn across the landscape. The taciturn protagonist striding callously away from the carnage he’s wrought. Oh, yeah. Good stuff.

If you share my lurid enjoyment of such books (and I know I’m not alone because more women read these than men), you’re going to want to meet John Rain.

John Rain is a professional assassin; his specialty is making the deaths look natural. He contracts out his services to whomever is willing to pay the price. His only requirements are that he will not kill women or children, they must be principals only (no using a dead guy to warn the real target how bad things are going to get), and no one else is to be given the same contract.

Half Japanese, half American, he is caught between two cultures but has embraced the Japanese part in recent years even to the extent of having plastic surgery to alter his Caucasian features. Raised in both countries, he learned his craft with the U.S. Army in Vietnam, and he’s good, very good, at what he does. He’s an expert at highly lethal martial arts, he can kill with his bare hands, and the morality of it all doesn’t trouble him much.

In Rain Storm, the third John Rain thriller narrated in the first person, Rain has relocated from Japan to Brazil. He had set up a secret identity for use when the time came he knew he’d have to disappear. But the CIA tracks him down through a woman he’d known first in Japan. Kanezaki, a CIA operative, hires him to assassinate Belghazi, a part French, part Arabic, illegal arms dealer.

Rain meets up with Belghazi in Macau where the target is a heavy gambler. A pretty young woman companion at his side, Rain appears to be a Japanese businessman on a holiday with his younger mistress. Things seem to be going as planned. Rain is just about to finish off Belghazi when Delilah, Belghazi’s beautiful blonde mistress, enters the hotel suite. Delilah seems to have her own anti-Belghazi agenda. What is it? And is there more to Belghazi being in Macau than just gambling?

It’s advisable to start with the first book in the series, Rain Fall, because Rain’s history to some extent explains his alienation and lack of remorse over his work. The succeeding books reveal more about his background and attitudes, his likes (he’s a jazz enthusiast) and dislikes, but they build on the first. The first person point of view provides insight into Rain’s thoughts and character. It’s possible to feel some sympathy for him and understand his motivations, but make no mistake: this guy is a cold-blooded killing machine. He’s not above breaking a man’s neck just to make a point.

So if you like your heroes to be nobly heroic, you’re probably not going to like John Rain. But if you’ve relished every single Jack Reacher book and wish they came out more frequently than just one a year, then Barry Eisler’s John Rain series is definitely worth checking out.

And a fourth book, Falling Rain, has just been published in hardback so you won’t have to wait a whole year for the next installment. You can be sure that I’ll be reading it.

--Lesley Dunlap