It looks like thriller writers have been reading the same Department of Homeland Security memo.  Both Barry Eisler's assassin John Rain and Michael Connelly's detective Harry Bosch have to deal with threats featuring the same radioactive element, cesium, in these summer thrillers.  As always, enjoy!  

 

Requiem for an Assassin, by Barry Eisler.  Putnam's, $24.95 (356p), ISBN 978-0-399-15246-3

 

In his sixth rendition of contract killer John Rain, following 2006's The Last Assassin, Eisler plunges our favorite assassin into a race against time and his own inner demons to save his best friend, former Marine sniper Dox.  (Jason Bourne doesn't count.  He doesn't even know who he is or what he's done.)

 

Since his last operation, when he reluctantly accepted that he'd never see his infant son again, Rain has settled in Paris near his lover, beautiful and desirable Mossad agent Delilah, and is trying to retire from the "business."  (As Bourne is discovering, that's easier said than done.)

 

But, his past and his enemies are plotting to draw him back in.  Rogue CIA agent Jim Hilger, a past adversary, snatches Dox from his Indonesian hideaway, and threatens to kill him unless Rain agrees to take out three targets. 

 

The challenge reawakens the cold-blooded killer in Rain that he's been trying to subdue.  And, as he sets out methodically to track and kill his assigned prey, Rain wrestles with his conscience—not liking what he is but afraid that he can't change. 

 

When Rain discovers that the assassinations are to conceal a plot to use cesium to contaminate a Rotterdam refinery, he races against time to foil the plot and rescue Dox.   

 

The battle between Rain's super-sized id and stunted ego—a Freudian David and Goliath—is at the book's center and adds heft to the rather conventional chase and rescue theme.  As does the tentative, but intense, relationship between Rain and the intriguing  Delilah. 

 

Former CIA agent Eisler has created in Rain and Delilah a couple of unorthodox and unlikely heroes.  For his part, Rain is "a killer.  A natural predator."  Readers shouldn't identify with or root for such a character, but they do.  It will be interesting to see where Eisler takes them in the future. 

 

John Rain on Civilization and Its Discontents

 

"Just about everybody in Palo Alto walked around attached to a Starbucks coffee."

 

"That's management for you.  If they're not doing nothing, they're overreacting."

 

"In a bureaucracy, the fear of looking stupid is stronger than the fear of losing Rotterdam."

 

"I tend to be a meat-and-potatoes guy about blades; insert pointy end in target.  Repeat as necessary."

 

"Americans would rather send soldiers to war than carpool to work."

 

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The Overlook, by Michael Connelly.  Little, Brown, $21.99 (225p) ISBN 978-0-316-01895-1

 

LA police detective Harry Bosch is back in his own version of "24," except that Bosch wraps things up in half the time that Jack Bauer requires.

 

For his thirteenth appearance, Bosch has a new assignment with Homicide Special, a unit that takes on murders with a political or celebrity angle and promise to be especially difficult or time-consuming.  He also has a new partner, Ignacio Ferras, a young cop unaccustomed to, and uncomfortable with, Bosch's ad hoc methods. 

 

When a victim is discovered shot execution-style on an overlook above Mulholland Dam, Bosch and Ferras get the call.  It's soon clear that this isn't an ordinary homicide when special agent Rachel Walling of the FBI's Tactical Intelligence Unit—and an old flame of Bosch's—shows up at the crime scene. 

 

As the facts emerge, it appears that the victim, Dr. Stanley Kent, a medical physicist, has been induced to steal cesium, a radioactive element used to treat cancer, to ransom his wife from terrorists.  Now, Kent is dead, and the cesium is missing.

 

The FBI, of course, moves in to take over the case and shut the LAPD out of the investigation.    The FBI isn’t interested in investigating the homicide.  It's the terrorism angle that trips their trigger.  

 

Never a fan of the feds, Bosch pushes back.  He comes at the case from the homicide angle—noting that if you find the killer, you find the cesium. 

 

The Overlook is perfect for an afternoon by the pool or a cross-country flight: fast-paced and absorbing with enough twists to keep you engaged and guessing to the end.  

 

Harry Bosch on Life, Death, and the FBI

 

"Most of [the LAPD's computers] carried more viruses than a Hollywood Boulevard hooker."

 

"We are all circling the drain."

 

"The number-one FBI priority is not to be embarrassed."

 

"When it comes to sharing information, the FBI eats like an elephant and shits like a mouse."