Fault Line by Barry Eisler

Join Barry Eisler, author of the military action thriller, Fault Line (Ballantine Books, March 2009), as he virtually tours the blogosphere in May on his first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion!

 

After graduating from Cornell Law School, Barry Eisler spent three years in a covert position with the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, then worked as a technology lawyer and startup executive in Silicon Valley and Japan, earning his black belt at the Kodokan International Judo Center. Eisler’s 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 translatedinto nearly twenty languages. The first book in Eisler’s assassin John Rain series, Rain Fall, has been made into a moviestarring Gary Oldman that was released by Sony Pictures in April 2009.

 

For more information about the author or his work, please visit http://www.barryeisler.com/

Silicon Valley: the eccentric inventor of a new encryption application is murdered in an apparent drug deal. Istanbul: a cynical undercover operative receives a frantic call from his estranged brother, a patent lawyer who believes he’ll be the next victim. And on the sun-drenched slopes of Sand Hill Road, California’s nerve center of money and technology, old family hurts sting anew as two brothers who share nothing but blood and bitterness wage a desperate battle against a faceless enemy.

 

Alex Treven has sacrificed everything to achieve his sole ambition: making partner in his high-tech law firm. But then the inventor of a technology Alex is banking on is murdered, the patent examiner who reviewed the innovation dies–and Alex himself narrowly escapes an attack in his own home. Off balance, out of ideas, and running out of time, he knows that the one person who can help him is the last person he’d ever ask: his brother.

 

Ben Treven is a military liaison element, an elite undercover soldier paid to “find, fix, and finish” high-value targets in the United States global war on terror.

 

Disenchanted with what he sees as America’s culture of denial and decadence, Ben lives his detached life in the shadows because the black ops world is all he really knows–and because other than Alex, whom he hasn’t spoken to since their mother died, his family is long gone.

But blood is thicker than water, and when Ben receives Alex’s frantic call he hurries to San Francisco to help him. Only then does Alex reveal that there’s another player who knows of the technology: Sarah Hosseini, a young Iranian American lawyer whom Alex has long secretly desired–and whom Ben immediately distrusts. As these three struggle to identify the forces attempting to silence them, Ben and Alex are forced to examine the events that drove them apart–even as Sarah’s presence, and her own secret yearnings, deepens the fault line between them.

 

A full-throttle thriller that is both emotionally and politically charged, Fault Line centers on a conspiracy that has spun out of the shadows and onto the streets of America, a conspiracy that can be stopped by only three people–three people with different worldviews, different grievances, different motives. To survive the forces arrayed against them, they’ll first have to survive one another.

 

MY THOUGHTS:

 

This is the first book by Barry Eisler that I have read and was intrigued by the description on the back.  This book is centered around two brothers who have been estranged from each other for quite some time.  These brothers are like night and day – Alex is an attorney in Silicon Valley while Ben is a government assassin.

 

Alex is working on a “project” and when things go wrong and people are killed – it is at this point he calls his brother for help.   You can see from the beginning that there is going to be turmoil between the two brothers because their personalities differ so greatly.  They are also still working through issues that surround the death of their sister when they were younger.

 

Although the plot itself held my interest, I found it to be predictable at times, especially concerning the feelings each brother was battling.  This author does has experience on his side, which helps lend credability to his writing, and he is obviously a good writer.  This is a good thriller, but I would put it right in the middle of the pack when compared to other books I’ve read in the same genre.  I will be certain to check out the “John Rain” series as these sound as if they are his best work to date, and will also look forward to what he has to bring in the future.

 

WIN PRIZES!!!

 

FAULT LINEVIRTUAL BLOG TOUR ’09will officially begin on May 1 and end on May 29. You can visit Barry’s blog stops at http://www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com/ in May to find out more about this great book and talented author!

As a special promotion for all our authors, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors’ blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available.