The Last Train

Michael Pronko

2020 թ. հնս · Raked Gravel Press

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In Tokyo, murder’s easy to hide.
Detective Hiroshi Shimizu investigates white collar crime in Tokyo. When an American businessman turns up dead, his mentor Takamatsu calls him out to the site of a grisly murder. A glimpse from a security camera video suggests the killer might be a woman. Hiroshi quickly learns how close homicide and suicide can appear in a city full of high-speed trains just a step—or a push—away.

How do you find one woman in the biggest city in the world?

Takamatsu drags Hiroshi out to the hostess clubs and skyscraper offices of Tokyo in search of the killer. Hiroshi goes deeper and deeper into Tokyo’s intricate, perilous market for buying and selling the most expensive land in the world. He teams up with ex-sumo wrestler Sakaguchi to scour Tokyo’s sacred temples, corporate offices and industrial wastelands to find out why one woman was driven to murder.

“A terrific thriller.” Blue Ink Review

“An absorbing investigation.” Kirkus Reviews

“Gripping and suspenseful.” Booklife

“An utterly, page-turning adventure,” Forward Reviews

After years in America and lost in neat, clean spreadsheets, Hiroshi confronts the stark realities of the biggest city in the world, where inside information can travel in a flash from the insiders at top investment firms to street-level punks and teenage hostesses, everyone scrambling for their cut of Tokyo’s lucrative land deals.

Hiroshi’s determined to cut through Japan’s ambiguities—and dangers—to find the murdering ex-hostess before she extracts her final revenge—which just might be him.

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Michael Pronko became a professor of American Literature and Culture at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo after years of traveling, an M.A. in ESL, an M.A. in Comp Lit and a PhD in English from the University of Kent. His seminars focus on contemporary novels and film adaptations and he teaches classes in American film, music and art. Michael has published three award-winning collections about Tokyo life and two mystery novels, The Last Train and The Moving Blade. The latter was selected as one of the best indie mysteries and thrillers of 2018 by Kirkus Reviews. Michael has written regular columns for many publications, including The Japan Times, Newsweek Japan, ST Shukan, and Artscape Japan. He runs his own website, Jazz in Japan (www.jazzinjapan.com). More at: www.michaelpronko.com www.facebook.com/pronkoauthor @pronkomichael