Tokyo Traffic: Book THREE (Detective Hiroshi Series) 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.

In Tokyo, street smarts aren't always enough

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.

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

• ISBN-13 : 978-1942410195
• 294 pages

Michael Pronko is a Tokyo-based writer of murder, memoir and music. His writing about Tokyo life and his character-driven mysteries have won awards and five-star reviews. Kirkus Reviews selected his second novel, The Moving Blade for their Best Books of 2018. The Last Train won the Shelf Unbound Competition for Best Independently Published Book.

Michael also runs the website, Jazz in Japan, which covers the vibrant jazz scene in Tokyo and Yokohama. During his 20 years in Japan, he has written about Japanese culture, art, society and politics for Newsweek Japan, The Japan Times, and Artscape Japan. He has read his essays on NHK TV and done programs for Nippon Television based on his writings. 

A philosophy major, Michael traveled for years, ducking in and out of graduate schools, before finishing his PhD on Charles Dickens and film. He finally settled in Tokyo as a professor of American Literature at Meiji Gakuin University. His seminars focus on contemporary novels, short stories and film adaptations.