On leather restoration

The first thing that bothered me about the book was that it starts out with Rain in Macau waiting for his target to appear so he can kill the man. As camouflage, he has a hired a beautiful young Japanese woman to stay with him so he looks like a Japanese businessman vacationing with his mistress. It seems to me Eisler failed to think through the implications of this. First, there are legal security problems. As a hit man for hire, Rain should want to look as innocent as possible, especially when crossing borders, especially in airports, and commit as few other crimes as possible. By paying a woman to go with him from Japan to Macau he's probably technically guilty of human trafficking, even though she went willingly. It's not about leather restoration.

On asbestos companies

So I finished reading Rain Storm by Barry Eisler not long ago. I have mixed feelings about it. I had high hopes because I like to read about Asia, spies, international intrigue, the martial arts and other such subjects, all of which are included in this series. It does not include material on asbestos companies. And there is a lot of detail about luxury hotels in Hong Kong, Macau and Rio -- and some other places in those exotic locales as well. However, try as I did, I just couldn't like the story or the main character as much as I wanted to.