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I live in Tokyo, and was a jazz writer for quite a few years, and still am. But when I started I was writing about jazz for the Japan Times, so I was always out at night in the nightlife parts of the city. I’d see these hostesses who work in all the clubs there, and they are stunningly attractive. But, I wondered what kind of life they led, staying up all night, working in the clubs in all these pretty wild areas of the city. I stared to wonder what was inside their appealing external appearance. What if one of them was a LOT smarter than they men she was working with, and decided to get more money than she could make as a hostess. The other inspiration is riding trains. They are a central part of Tokyo life. I wanted to explore how important they are to life—and to death. The Last Train came from observation and curiosity, like most novels, I suppose. My position living in Tokyo for 20 years, teaching American literature and culture at Meiji Gakuin University contributed a lot to this work, but in bits and pieces over the years. Teaching literature all day and going out many nights all rolled together into this story.
Reviewed by Joel R. Dennstedt for Readers' Favorite
Michael Pronko, a highly-accomplished author already, offers up a truly stellar performance in this debut mystery-series novel, The Last Train. Set in modern day Tokyo, a literary hologram for the enticingly complex and still largely inaccessible – to foreigners – Japan, about which Pronko is personally and convincingly conversant, this mystery is as much an introduction to the back alleyways, hostess clubs, industrial factories and local markets of an exotic, deadly city as it is a cat-and-mouse chase through those venues to find an elusive murderess, whose preferred method of disposal involves throwing her victims in front of Japan’s famously fast and timely trains. Which is precisely where the novel begins, with police detective Hiroshi Shimizu conscripted from his normal white-collar crime duties - due to his fluency in English - to aid in the murder investigation of an American investor.
Were it only for the intriguing plot line of Michael Pronko’s mystery thriller, The Last Train, a reader would be well satisfied. A master of his craft, however, Pronko’s deeper skill lies in his ability to reveal with concise Japanese subtlety the city beneath the city, the people beneath the people, and the cause beneath the cause for which an all too sympathetic villain is enacting her decidedly gruesome revenge. One wonders if he is rooting for the cop or for the villain – maybe both? This is a complex novel written sparsely, maintaining a high velocity of movement while inducing a meditative contemplation toward the motivation of each character involved. There is humor too, as subtle as the rest. Woven altogether, Michael Pronto has put in place the foundation for a truly engaging and popular mystery series.
