The Last Train
Detective Hiroshi Shimizu investigates white collar crime in Tokyo. He’s lost his girlfriend and still dreams of his time studying in America, but with a stable job, his own office and a half-empty apartment, he’s settled in.
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 was a woman, but in Japan, that seems unlikely. 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.
Takamatsu drags Hiroshi out to the hostess clubs and skyscraper offices of Tokyo in search of the killer. She’s trying to escape Japan for a new life by playing a high-stakes game of insider information. To find her, Hiroshi goes deeper and deeper into Tokyo’s intricate, ominous market for the most expensive real estate in the world.
When Takamatsu inexplicably disappears, Hiroshi teams up with ex-sumo wrestler Sakaguchi. They scour Tokyo’s sacred temples, corporate offices and industrial wastelands to find out where Takamatsu went, and why one woman would be driven to murder when she seems to have it all.
In a megalopolis of 40 million people, finding one woman is nearly impossible. If he can’t find her, more businessmen will die, she’ll flee the country and the male-dominated, cutthroat world of buying and selling property will never change.
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 top investment firms to the bottom of the working world, where street-level punks and teenage hostesses sell their souls for a small cut of high-profit 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.
AWARDS
Winner Shelf Unbound Best Independently Published Book (2018)
Solo Medalist Winner New Apple E-Book Awards for Mystery (2017)
Winner Beverly Hills Book Awards for Crime Fiction (2017)
Winner Best Mystery Book Excellence Awards for Mystery (2017)
Winner Independent Press Award for Mystery and for Thriller (2018)
Global Award Reader Views (2017-2018)
Gold Award Literary Titan Book Award (2017)
Silver Honoree IBPA Benjamin Franklin Digital Awards (2017)
Silver Award Feathered Quill Awards (2018)
Silver Award Independent Publisher Book Awards (2018)
Finalist Book Readers Appreciation Group (B.R.A.G.) for Thriller (2017)
Finalist Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards for Thriller (2017)
Finalist 2018 International Book Awards
Finalist EPIC eBook Awards (2018)
Finalist SPR Review Awards (2017)
Finalist The Wishing Shelf Book Awards (2017)
Finalist Next Generation Indie Book Awards for Mystery (2018)
Semi-finalist Booklife Prize for Mystery (2017)
Shortlist Eric Hoffer Awards Mystery/Crime (2019)
Top Ten Self-Published Books 2017 The Bookbag
Other Novels by Michael Pronko
