JIAN

by Eric Van Lustbader ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 5, 1985

Fourth novel in Lustbader's Asian series (The Ninja, 1980; Black Heart, 1983; and The Mike, 1984) and as bone-breaking and blood-lusting a martial-arts thriller as the others, this time hopping about from Washington to Hong Kong, China, Tokyo and Moscow. For nearly five years Jake Maroc, a member of the Quarry (the President's personal, extraCIA, supertop-secret, world-antiterrorist group) and top man for wet work (bloodletting), has been tracing Nichiren, the world's number-one independent assassin-for-hire and a one-man slaughterhouse. Maroc's chaos raid against Nichiren in Tokyo is a disaster, costing Maroc his own men and two innocent Japanese as well, and Quarry decides to make Maroc pay for his break in discipline by sundering him from Quarry--he is totally on his own now. Is Jake's rashness (and failure to take out Nichiren) a reflection on the earlier Sumchun River incident in which his five-man dantai (close-knit, communally conscious fighting group) was destroyed before his eyes--did this horror forever impair his effectiveness? Now Jake's disappeared. What's more, his wife, Mariana, is missing. Did she set up Jake for Nichiren? When Jake emerges from the four-day blackout of his wounds, he finds himself confronted by his childhood girlfriend Bliss, a Eurasian, and soon--despite the dispiriting discovery that he has lost still another dantai group--his ""penis was stiff and quivering. As if it were his whole body. . . He was so hard it hurt."" Meanwhile, in Moscow, General Daniella Alexandrova Vorkuta, who runs Nichirev, is instructed by the stratospherically powerful Lantin of the Politburo and the Presidium to have Nichirev once and for all ""take out"" Jake Maroc. The first heavy blow for Jake is when he sees Mariana get shot and then die in Nichiren's arms during a howling thunderstorm. It is only after Jake's fatal final karate duel with Nichiren that he discovers that his great adversary is also his half-brother. ""I've murdered my brother,"" Jake says and goes comatose for 48 hours until girlfriend Bliss knocks him over, digs out his noble member and ("". . .she plunged him into her molten core. He reared and went all the way up"") brings him back to life despite his great resistance. Adolescence regained.

Pub Date: Aug. 5, 1985

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Villard/Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1985

Categories: FICTION