Book Description: John Rain is back. And “the most charismatic assassin since James Bond” (
San Francisco Chronicle) is up against his most formidable enemy yet: the nexus of political, military, media, and corporate factions known only as the Oligarchy.
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.
The Detachment is what fans of Eisler, “one of the most talented and literary writers in the thriller genre” (Chicago Sun-Times), have been waiting for: the worlds of the award-winning Rain series, and of the bestselling Fault Line and Inside Out, colliding in one explosive thriller as real as today’s headlines and as frightening as tomorrow’s.
J.A. Konrath and Blake Crouch Review The Detachment 
Bestselling authors J.A. Konrath and Blake Crouch are the co-writers of the thriller Stirred, available on Kindle November 22, 2011, and in paperback on February 21, 2012. Read on for their one line reviews of Barry Eisler's The Detachment, or click the link below to read their full review:
J.A. Konrath: "I read it so quickly that my eyeballs got whiplash."
Blake Crouch: "I read this book on a 12-hour flight, after I'd already been up for 18 hours. Anything less than flat-out riveting and I would've instantly been asleep. It was like literary adrenaline."
Continue Reading Konrath's and Crouch's Review of The Detachment
Personal Safety Tips from Assassin John Rain 
(Written by Barry Eisler)
Barry Eisler spent three years in a covert position with the CIA, then worked as a technology lawyer and start-up executive in Silicon Valley and Japan, earning his black belt at the Kodokan International Judo Center along the way. Eisler's bestselling John Rain thrillers have won the Barry Award and the Gumshoe Award for Best Thriller of the Year, have been included in numerous "Best Of" lists, and have been translated into nearly 20 languages.
Read on for personal safety tips from assassin John Rain:
All effective personal protection, all effective security, all true self-defense, is based on the ability and willingness to think like the opposition.
I'm writing this article on my laptop in a crowded coffee shop I like. There are a number of other people around me similarly engaged. I think to myself, If I wanted to steal a laptop, this would be a pretty good place to do it. You come in, order coffee and a muffin, sit, and wait. Eventually, one of these computer users is going to get up and make a quick trip to the bathroom. He'll be thinking, "Hey, I'll only be gone for a minute." He doesn't know that a minute is all I need to get up and walk out with his $3,000 laptop. (Note how criminals are adept at thinking like their victims. You need to treat them with the same respect.)
Okay. I've determined where the opposition is planning on carrying out his crime (this coffee shop), and I know how he's going to do it (snatch and dash). I now have options:
- avoid the coffee shop entirely (avoid where the crime will occur);
- secure my laptop to a chair with a twenty dollar Kensington security cable (avoid how the crime will occur--it's hard to employ bolt cutters unobtrusively in a coffee shop, or to carry away a laptop that has a chair hanging off it); and
- hope to catch the thief in the act, chase him down, engage him with violence.
Continue Reading Personal Safety Tips from Assassin John Rain
Living in quiet semi-retirement in Tokyo, John Rain tries to avoid his old life as an assassin until a group of men approaches him with an offer difficult to refuse. Colonel Scott Horton wants the group to assassinate three targets who are attempting a coup: the director of the national counterterrorism center, the president's counterterrorism advisor, and a Supreme Court justice. Rain and his companions -- Dox, Larison, and Treven -- discover they have unwittingly put the coup in place and are blamed for a series of false flag attacks on U.S. soil that spark national outrage. Full of twists, turns, and double-crosses, this team of assassins travels from Tokyo to Vienna to Washington D.C., avoiding secret prisons and presidential hit lists. Rain, Dox, Larison and Treven's group dynamic is strong and their motives are always clear. Dox makes an excellent comic foil for Rain and the borderline-sociopathic Larison, but readers will find all four as sympathetic and likeable as one could possibly find a group of trained killers. Fans of Eisler will be thrilled, and new ones will be inspired to go back and look at his previous work.