The Kaisho (Nicholas Linnear Series #4) »

Eric Lustbader is the author of more than twenty-five best-selling novels, including The Ninja, in which he introduced Nicholas Linnear, one of modern fiction's most beloved and enduring heroes.

In 2004, Mr. Lustbader was chosen by the estate of the late Robert Ludlum to continue the Jason Bourne novels. The first, The Bourne Legacy, was published in 2005. It garnered rave reviews and was an instant international bestseller. He is currently at work on the second Bourne novel, to be published in 2007. He is also the author of two successful and highly regarded series of fantasy novels, The Sunset Warrior Cycle and The Pearl Saga.

He and his wife Victoria have been residents of the South Fork of Long Island for more than fifteen years.

From Eric Van Lustbader, the suspense mastermind behind the smash bestsellers featuring Robert Ludlum’s™ Jason Bourne, comes a blockbuster thriller of one man’s debt of honor— and his ultimate destiny.

Years ago, Nicholas Linnear—the Ninja—made a promise to his father: If a man named Mikio Okami ever sought his help, he would respond without question, no matter the cost. Now the time has come to fulfill his pledge. Okami is the Kaisho— the boss of bosses of the Yakuza, the Japanese underworld—and in his Venice headquarters, he realizes that he has been marked for death. But the identity of the assassin and the inexorable compulsion that drives him are shrouded in mysticism and madness. Honor bound to protect Okami, Linnear is prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice: a descent into a chasm of knowledge so potent, of dangers so unfathomable, that even if he survives, he will emerge changed forever.

Publishers Weekly

Lustbader ( White Ninja , etc.) brings back Nicholas Linnear in this fast-moving thriller that combines the trademark Lustbader ingredients of Eastern mysticism and international intrigue. Because of a promise made to his father, Linnear finds himself allied to Mikio Okami, the Kaisho, or Godfather of the the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia. Linnear's mission is to protect the Kaisho from a Vietnamese assassin who has already eliminated one of Okami's allies, an American mafioso supposedly hidden under the U.S. Witness Protection Program. All of this is the result of an alliance between the Mafia and the Yakuza and machinations of the Looking Glass, a secret organization that has infiltrated the U.S. government and is dedicated to world economic control. But reproducing all the intricacies of Lustbader's plotting would be fruitless; like Robert Ludlum, Lustbader is at his best when he is creating a twisted web of intrigue, violence, double cross and his own brand of oriental esotericism. Here again he proves himself a master storyteller who creates believable characters while juggling numerous plot lines without ever losing the reader's attention. (Oct.)