Not much to this - don’t waste your time. It adds nothing to the character Larison that we do not already know. ( )

Dreadful. Negative stars are needed. Larison (a character from Eisler's other novels) drives up the Pacific Coast, goes to a small town bar and picks up a male college student, Seth. Turns out that Seth is bait and his two co-conspirators try to mug Larison, who kicks the crap out of them. mutilates the two muggers. Larison forces the Seth to drive him to a remote spot where Larison first rapes then abandons him. Pure porn and violence, justified as anti-gay bashing. Yuck. ( )

Not much to this - don’t waste your time. It adds nothing to the character Larison that we do not already know. ( )

The Lost Coast by Barry Eisler is a Kindle Short story I downloaded using Kindle Unlimited (KU). The story is preceded by a warning that it is for mature audiences and contains scenes of sexual violence that might be different than what I am accustomed to. I immediately began to search my home for a tracking device. How does he know what I am accustomed to?

This short story starts out with descriptions of tradecraft. Everyone has picked up from TV that when you are on the run it is not cool to use credit cards. But what about getting a room on the second floor so you can do an emergency exit via dumpster without breaking your legs? Or the one about keeping everything you don’t need in your car? A person on the run doesn’t want to go back to a hotel and go through check-out procedures. And Larison was on the run. We readers don’t know why. The story will proceed without giving us that unnecessary information.

But Larison was lonely in his second-floor bare hotel room. It was time to cruise the town, on foot, and see what action there was to be had. The first bar was too young for him, mostly for college students, the second resembled a penitentiary, the third was more restaurant than bar, but the fourth one was just right. Goldilocks and the three bears revisited. Larison entered the bar, sized up the other clientele and settled on an innocent looking good looking guy. Luring (maybe) Seth to go with him to purchase drugs, the two exited the bar and followed a path to where two bad guys were waiting. They weren’t truly muggers although they might steal targets of opportunity; they were gay bashers and innocent Seth was the bait to the set-up.

Unfortunately, the would-be gangsters were dealing with a professional gangster and Larison began to demonstrate his professional skills. Having disposed of the immediate two problems, what should he do with Seth? Remember that warning in the first paragraph above. That is the sort of spoiler surprise. You should read the story.

This is my second Eisler story. I look forward to reading more. ( )

This story is not for everyone. First, I would consider that reading Eisler's previous book Inside Out to be essential as that book introduced Larison. And knowing who Larison is and knowing about his ... um ... well ... knowing about how he is different than most other characters present in similar genre fiction is absolutely critical to this story. And make no mistake: The ending of this short story is disturbing. It fits the character, which is not to say that I condone what happens, but some (many?) readers will be angry and offended. But then I think that was part of what Eisler set out to do. I think the point is to make readers think about the issue that confronts Larison and others like him. The difference is that unlike most, Larison has the ability to respond. ( )