Tokyo Traffic

by Michael Pronko

Overview

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.

 

Product Details

BN ID:	2940164054724
Publisher:	Michael Pronko
Publication date:	06/20/2020
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	426 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Michael Pronko is an award-winning, Tokyo-based writer of murder, memoir and music. His writings on Tokyo life and his taut character-driven mysteries have won critics' awards and five-star reviews. Kirkus Reviews called his second novel, The Moving Blade, "An elegant balance of Japanese customs with American-style hard-boiled procedural" and selected it for their Best Books of 2018.

Michael also runs the website, Jazz in Japan, about the vibrant jazz scene in Tokyo and Yokohama. He has written regular columns about Japanese culture, art, jazz, society and politics for Newsweek Japan, The Japan Times, Artscape Japan, Jazznin, and ST Shukan. He has also appeared on NHK and Nippon Television.

A philosophy major, Michael traveled for years, ducking in and out of graduate schools, before finishing his PhD on Charles Dickens and film, and settling in Tokyo as a professor of American Literature at Meiji Gakuin University. He teaches contemporary American novels, film adaptations, music and art.

Editorial Reviews

"A great page-turner with real tension towards the end and I hope that it won't be too long before we hear more about Hiroshi," The Bookbag.

"A dark and striking thriller with an indelible cast and setting," Kirkus Reviews.

"Starts fast and doesn't let up on its breakneck pace until bodies (both living and dead) are strewn all over the place," Pacific Book Review.

"With Tokyo Traffic, Pronko further establishes Hiroshi as one of the most distinctive and intrepid detectives in contemporary crime fiction," Best Thrillers.

"Taut and terse, this noir novel is executed to perfection," Foreword Clarion Reviews.

"A story that winds through Tokyo's streets and Hiroshi's heart alike, drawing readers through a dangerous game that culminates in an unexpected, satisfying conclusion," Midwest Book Review.

"Pronko's characters are fully developed, his dialogue is authentic, and his writing is clear and concise," San Francisco Book Review.

"It's clear the author knows Japan deep in his soul. Pronko is also a masterful storyteller. As the narrative's tension builds, readers will find themselves racing toward the inexorable moment when police, victims and villains collide," Blue Ink Review.

"A high-energy thriller set in the gruesome world of human trafficking and child pornography, TOKYO TRAFFIC keeps the adrenaline pumping until the very end," IndieReader.

"Combining old-fashioned gumshoeing with modern-day social conventions, Pronko's tale is as much a Tokyo detective's diary as it is a gritty underworld whodunit," US Review of Books.

From the Publisher