Books by Michael Pronko

Running from a life she didn't choose, in a city she doesn't know, Sukanya, a young Thai girl, escapes into Tokyo. With her Bangkok street smarts, she stays ahead of traffickers willing to do anything to recover the computer she took when she fled a murder scene. After befriending Chiho, a Japanese girl living in an internet café, Sukanya tries to rid herself of her pursuers, and her past, forever.Meanwhile, Detective Hiroshi Shimizu leaves the safe confines of his office to investigate a triple murder at a porn studio. The studio's accounts point him in multiple directions at once. Together with ex-sumo wrestler Sakaguchi and old-school Takamatsu, Hiroshi tracks the killers through Tokyo's teen hangouts, bayside docks, and crowded squares, straight into the underbelly of the global economy.As bodies wash up from Tokyo Bay, Hiroshi tries to find the Thai girl whose name he doesn't even know. He uncovers trafficking rings and cryptocurrency scammers whose connections extend to the highest levels of Tokyo's power elite.TOKYO TRAFFIC is the third in the Tokyo-based Detective Hiroshi series by award-winning author Michael Pronko.

Winner Shelf Unbound Best Independently Published Book 2018Solo Medalist Winner New Apple Awards for Excellence 2017  Winner Crime Fiction Beverly Hills Book Awards 2017Winner Best Mystery Book Excellence Awards 2017Detective 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.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.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.More at: www.michaelpronko.com

Motions and Moments: More Essays on TokyoMotions and Moments is the third book by Michael Pronko on the fluid feel and vibrant confusions of Tokyo life. These 42 new essays burrow into the unique intensities that suffuse the city and ponder what they mean to its millions of inhabitants. Based on Pronko's 18 years living, teaching and writing in Tokyo, these essays on how Tokyoites work, dress, commute, eat and sleep are steeped in insights into the city's odd structures, intricate pleasures and engaging undertow. Included are essays on living to size and loving the crowd, on Tokyo's dizzying uncertainties and daily satisfactions, and on the 2011 earthquake. As in his first two books, this collection captures the ceaseless flow and passing flashes of life in biggest city in the world with gentle humor and rich detail. Praise for the first collection, Beauty and Chaos: Slices and Morsels of Tokyo Life:"e;A clear-eyed but affectionate portrait of a city that reaches beyond simple stereotypes. An elegantly written, precisely observed portrait of a Japanese city and its culture."e; Kirkus Reviews"e;Beauty and Chaos is a spectacular read. Its essays are long enough to be cohesive and provocative while remaining short and sweet. The collection is masterful and unique."e; Stephanie Chandler, SPR Review"e;He notices the kinds of things that might be taken for granted by the Japanese and overlooked entirely by visitors."e; Rebecca Foster, The BookbagGold Award First Place for Cultural Non-Fiction (Reader's Favorite Awards 2015)Gold Award (Non-Fiction Authors Association 2015)Praise for the second collection, Tokyo's Mystery Deepens: Essays on Tokyo:"e;As chapters flow through Tokyo cultural experiences, readers receive a rare glimpse of the structure and nature of Tokyo's underlying psyche. It's a powerful, intimate consideration of many aspects of Japanese culture."e; D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review"e;An insider's view of what life is really like in this pulsing, densely populated Asian metropolis...this little book of short, easy to read essays delivers to its readers an education."e; Vera A. Pereskokova Luxury Reading Blog"e;Could one have a better guide? Anyone planning to work and live in Tokyo for a period of time will find Pronko indispensable."e; BookReview.com"e;Tokyo's Mystery Deepens is so much more than just a guidebook to Tokyo...it actually plunges into the minuscule details of what it is like to be a Tokyoite."e; OnlineBookClub.orgGold Award for Creative Non-Fiction (eLit Awards 2015)Silver Award for Travel Essay (eLit Award 2015)