THE KAISHO Bound to honor a promise to his father, Nicholas Linnear arrives in Venice to aid the Kaisho, boss of bosses of the Yakuza, the Japanese underworld. Mikio Okami has been marked for death by an assassin whose motives are shrouded in mysticism and madness. To protect Okami, Linnear must descend into a chasm of knowledge so potent, of danger so unfathomable, that even if he survives he will be changed forever. At the same time, in America, a Mafia godfather is slain in a brutal ritual. . . his exotic sister is about to embrace a forbidden power. . . and ex-detective Lew Croaker uncovers evidence of a vast, terrifying conspiracy, linking the Mafia and the Yakuza. Facing an incomprehensible evil, Linnear and Croaker enter a world of seduction and betrayal, of primal fears and primitive desires. . . the world of THE KAISHO .