Rain Storm, Barry Eisler, Signet, $7.99.

In the third book of the series Rain Storm, new to paperback, which I find to be the strongest so far, Rain has finally achieved his long cherished dream of escaping to Brazil to live in peaceful anonymity. Of course he's pulled back into the game by a newly energized post 9/11 CIA who want him to perform his specialty, a rub out that looks like natural causes or an accident, on an arms dealer who sells to terrorists. A moment of hesitation tied to his own unhappy childhood causes him to flub the job, putting him in everyone's cross hairs, and he struggles for survival in an ambiguous danger zone peopled by rogue agents, terrorist hit squads, and two new characters, Dox the sniper, an old acquaintance from the mujadeen days in Afghanistan and Delilah, the seductive Israeli spy.

The pleasures of Eisler's work are like those of James Bond (although his prose is clearly superior to Ian Fleming's), a vicarious jolt of adrenaline served in an atmosphere of fine clothes, fine scotch, and fine women in exotic locales. There's also the non-fiction aspect of learning the latest killing, incapacitating and surveillance methods, but the deeper kick is the paranoiac vision, the exploration of human consciousness in the most perilous situations and the portrait of a man who is prepared for a life or death struggle at any moment. When readers close the book and walk outside they see the world in a different way, through Rain's eyes, senses alive to every passerby, alert to the ever present possibility of pursuit and danger, the relatively humdrum urban world transformed into a battle zone, a jungle teeming with potential enemies. Fans of Lee Child or Adam Hall or lethal existential loners in general will definitely want to check out Barry Eisler's John Rain. (Jamie)