An Audie® Award Finalist

     Genius, mystic, master of language and culture, The protagonist’s secret is his determination to attain a rare kind of personal excellence, a state of effortless perfection—Shibumi.
     Nicholai Hel, born in the ravages of World War I China to an aristocratic Russian mother and a mysterious German father, raised in the spiritual gardens of a Japanese Go master, survives the destruction of Hiroshima to emerge as the world’s most artful lover and its most accomplished and highly paid assassin.
     Now living in an isolated mountain fortress with his magnificent Eurasian mistress, Hel faces his most sinister enemy, a super-monolith of espionage and monopoly.
     The battle lines are drawn: ruthless power and corruption on one side and on the other, Shibumi.

     Los Angeles Times: “Novels about international intrigue demand intricate plotting. Shibumi delivers.”
     St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “A master of international intrigue.”
     AudioFile: “Trevanian’s seventies-era storytelling loses nothing in this audio treatment…Reader Joe Barrett embodies the author’s voice ably, whether he’s enigmatic assassin Nicholai Hel, narcissistic agency head Mr. Diamond, or a laughable Basque sidekick.”
     Milwaukee Journal: “It’s hard to imagine a more nearly perfect spy story.”
     KLIATT: “Barrett, with his pleasing low-toned voice, narrates with skill, taking the time to develop Hel’s personality along with his concubine, his deep-voiced Basque friends, the nasty Americans, and other multinational types. An intriguing listening experience with more depth than most books of this genre.”

     An American film scholar and writer who wrote several successful novels under the pen name Trevanian ( 1931-2005).
     Whitaker also published works as Nicholas Seare, Beñat Le Cagot and Edoard Moran.
     He published the non-fiction The Language of Film under his own name.
     Whitaker wrote in a wide variety of genres, achieved best-seller status, and published under several names, but was best known as Trevanian.
     Between 1972 to 1983, five of his novels sold more than a million copies each. He was described as "the only writer of airport paperbacks to be compared to Zola, Ian Fleming, Poe and Chaucer."
     He revealed his real name in an interview with the New York Times in 1979. His books have been translated into more than 14 languages.

     Has appeared both on and off Broadway as well as in hundreds of radio and television commercials.
     He has narrated books by such authors as Larry McMurtry, Jay McInerney and Andy McNab.