The Last Train

In Tokyo, murder's easy to hide.

Winner 2018 Shelf Unbound Best Independently Published Book

Winner 2017 Book Excellence Awards Best Mystery Solo Medalist

Winner 2017 New Apple Awards for Excellence

Winner 2018 Independent Press Award for Mystery and for Thriller

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.

Hiroshi teams up with Takamatsu and 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. 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. 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.

"Gripping and suspenseful. 10 out of 10."-Booklife (by Publisher's Weekly)

The Last Train is the first book in the Tokyo-based Detective Hiroshi series by award-winning author Michael Pronko.