Madeen is a recently retired professor of modern literature at Tokyo City University and an adjunct professor at Keio University. He writes cross-genre and has penned a number of Amazon bestsellers.
Bestselling author Eric Madeen has announced his latest thriller novel, 'Massage World', will be available at no charge in e-book form March 14 and 15 at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Eric-Madeen/author/B08VGRNJVW?.
In describing the novel, Madeen stated:
Whose world is it anyway? To find out peek under the drape - and see the body in pain.
As to why crack the multicultural thriller 'Massage World' and dive deep into both sides of the massage industry, and marvel at the simultaneous unravelling of both. From the get-go you'll witness the force of that ambiguity, repelling as it is with jumper-cable sparks as in conflict galore, exceeding reader expectation and thus creating narrative drive, a kind of drive that at one point is literally hell on wheels of a massage table.
One onto which a dirty vice detective is lashed and bumped down each stair one thud at a time of the luxurious mansion housing Massage World. The mayhem throughout brings chuckles and laughs at the hilarity from SoCal, Japan and back.
As the global demand for massage therapy skyrockets, from luxurious spas to discreet outcalls with the latter evident in the media cycle, one ambitious therapist, Ingrid Swanson, dares to open Massage World, defying the local underworld kingpin.
Enter Jack Cobb, a ruthless massage parlor lord determined to seize control of Ingrid's business through a series of illicit "massage wars," aided by said vice-cop soliciting "extras" while Cobb’s sister on the “inside” flashes donut rolls of dead presidents to entice therapists over to the wild side. The chaos escalates as a media frenzy erupts on the hard-soled heels and handcuffs of a dramatic police raid, sparking neighborhood protests and the crackle and cackle of so much more, the raid itself a delirious curtain call of sorts as in each character hitherto mentioned is present but only one side bows the other out handcuffed into the cameras and newscaster announcing: "You get more than just a massage at the new 5* health spa Massage World."
Curiously, a fearless female biker gang figures in the ending, riding their rice rocket Yamahas and Hondas up the grandiose stairs of Massage World, then roaring up a floor and still another, then the thrust downstairs and onto the mean streets laid with burning rubber and wild-arced wheelies in the hellacious chase of Jack Cobb. Where he roars into is for you to savor.
Your being smitten with this Dionysian nightmare, clashing as it does with those on both sides of the tracks, be they crystally (holistic) or oily in a read you'll find zesty and informative as in what goes down or doesn't in the sliding signifier of Massage World, draped - or the heck with the drape.
'Massage World' has received rave reviews from readers:
“It combines gritty realism, lurid sensationalism, and darker-than-black comedy to conjure up a phantasmagoric vision of a world in pain … So earthquaking powerful and fresh it is, I've never read anything quite like it, not even close.” — Larry McCaffery, author notably of Some Other Frequency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors and former Professor of English and Comparative Literature at SDSU.
“It’s a sizzler of a thriller bursting with eccentric energy.” — William Luvaas, winner of a Huffington Post Book of the Year award.
“Very cinematic with a canny and calculated construction. A really high-octane potboiler. Motion and emotion. Exotica and erotica circling from SoCal to Japan and back to SoCal. Conflict galore. Kinkiness with and without aromatic oils. Who could ask for more?” — Harold Jaffe, Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing and Literature at San Diego State University and former Editor of Fiction International.
The ebook version of ‘Massage World’ will be available March 14 and 15, 2026 at no charge at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Eric-Madeen/author/B08VGRNJVW?
Other books by Madeen include:
Eric Madeen's bestselling travelogue, ‘Asian Trail Mix: True Tales from Borneo to Japan,’ scales down the sprawl of Asia by focusing on the unique and revelatory in gemmy prose. See up close and personal the razzmatazz of novice monks at play in northern Laos, the bonding with hustling pedicab drivers in Ho Chi Minh City, the rainforests blazed on gutsy treks across Borneo and Thailand's Elephant Island and novel things Japanese. Served up nice and spicy, Asian Trail Mix is slathered across 12 rocking-it essays plus a tall tale at its glorious ending, making for a baker's dozen of sumptuousness.
In a review for 'Asian Trail Mix', one reader said, "The writing is lush and emotive. It contains images and turns of phrase that will stay with you." Another said, "'Mr. Madeen has a knack for taking one into the depths of a country and introducing the reader to fascinating customs and interesting characters. Five stars!"
Another stated, "The author has a discerning eye for subjects of local interest at each of the intervening destinations, and truly commendable is how he’s able to draw out characters, getting their riveting stories while sketching remarkable details on the Asian trail. Eric Madeen, an American based in Japan, is clearly fueled with high-energy. It’s a rush to keep up with him, both on and off trail, either way transcribed in a voice that’s more than a language function but the sum totality of this writer’s experiences and means of expression. Madeen has been there and proof is in his prose.”
'Water Drumming In The Soul' - a fiery tale set in steamy equatorial Africa, Peace Corps volunteer David Fields, is on mission: to build a medical dispensary in a village where spells are cast on enemies and fear of a witch doctor reigns. David seldom has his bearings – cultural or geographical – and must fight a cocktail of tropical maladies as well as social taboos as he throws himself into work. Until... he meets Assam. Captivated by her water drumming, her playing the stream as a drum, David is drawn to her early on and becomes the hunter captured by the game. And what a rollicking game of love it is - with a tension or excitement between them that never dissipates, until the haunting end.
‘Tokyo-ing!’ - This is an apt word for this trio of tales chiming with anyone even slightly interested in Asia’s or rather the world’s most dynamic megalopolis and its glazing of layers – be they cultural or taking-wing exuberant. Madeen does deep dives in three fascinating directions and voices, including the persona in first-person female. Then doesn’t let readers come up for air because they don’t want to - until the delicious end.
‘Tennis Clubbed, Snubbed and Rubbity-Dub Dubbed’ - In historically rich Yokohama, where Captain Perry and his Black Ships cracked open Japan, the wicked shiver of the tennis snub in the postmodern present pits David Adams against K: a puffed-up xenophobic tyrant who rules over the courts of a club that has as its anthem, ironically, the promotion of international friendship. Between pops of new cans of tennis balls, Madeen has interwoven chapters seemingly lived as a prof, but herein a delirious fun-house look at Japanese university life. The whole wonderous unwrapping of a kimono’s obi likened by Peter Goodman, publisher of Stone Bridge Press, to a position paper on Japan.
Eric Madeen is available for media interviews and can be reached at ericsan@gol.com. All of his books are available at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Eric-Madeen/author/B08VGRNJVW?. More information is available at his website at https://ericmadeen.com/.
About Eric Madeen:
Eric Madeen is a recently retired associate professor of modern literature at Tokyo City University and an adjunct professor at Keio University. He's an award-winning author of six books. His writing has been published widely -- in Time, Asia Week, The East, Daily Yomiuri, Tokyo Journal, Kyoto Journal, Metropolis, Mississippi Review, ANA's inflight magazine Wingspan with its 350,000 some monthly readers, Peace Corps Worldwide, East Of The Web, Japanophile, Yomimono, The Pretentious Idea, Tombstone Epitaph, several anthologies, academic journals, therein his seminal essay "Under Western and Eastern Eyes" jointly published by the Ministry of Education of the Western Federation, Russia, and the Joseph Conrad Foundation, USA, and so on.
Madeen has been featured in several radio interviews and podcasts, notably Fascinating People, Fascinating Places, about the late Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Albert Schweitzer and his creation of a durable hospital in Lambarene, Gabon. Madeen’s investigative feature of the polymath Schweitzer and his enduring hospital won him a Profile in Citizenship from Peace Corps Worldwide. Madeen once made his living copywriting for what was then the world's largest ad agency Dentsu, for clients as diverse as Mazda, Subaru, Canon, Konica, Nikko Hotels International and Sony.
Just out of the University of Arizona which made him as a penman, Madeen served for 2.3 years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Francophone Gabon, Africa, where he built a primary school complex in an equatorial village surrounded by rainforest, a mind-blowing experience which inspired his first novel, Water Drumming in the Soul, shelfed not only in the Permanent Collection of Books by Peace Corps Writers in the Library of Congress but many readers’ hearts.
Contact:
Eric Madeen
https://ericmadeen.com
ericsan@gol.com
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