Michael Pronko

In Tokyo, murder’s easy to hide. 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....

When the top American diplomat in Tokyo, Bernard Mattson, is killed, he leaves more than a lifetime of successful Japan-American negotiations. He leaves a missing manuscript, boxes of research, a lost keynote speech and a tangled web of relations....

Award-winning novelist Michael Pronko examines Tokyo as a place, a culture, and a series of intense experiences, with humor, delicacy, and enchantment. More than just a setting for novels and films, Tokyo is a lively, interactive space that constantly pops up questions....

After the suspicious deaths of a seventy-something woman and a student recluse, Detective Hiroshi tracks down a gang of scammers who target retirees, robbing them of their pensions, life savings, and even the deeds to their homes....

Running from a life she didn’t choose, in a city she doesn’t know, Sukanya, a young Thai girl, loses herself in the vastness of Tokyo. With her Bangkok street smarts and some stolen money, she stays ahead of her former captors who will do anything to recover the computer she took....

After a top-tier manager in Japan’s premier media company ends up dead in front of company headquarters, Detective Hiroshi enters the high-pressure, hard-driving world of Tokyo’s large corporations....

Whether contemplating Tokyo’s odd-shaped bonsai houses, pachinko parlors, chopstick ballet, or the perilous habit of running for trains, the short, personal writings in Beauty and Chaos explore Tokyo from the inside to reveal the city’s deeper meanings and daily pleasures....

After the murder of a high-flying executive in one of Tokyo’s wealth management firms, Detective Hiroshi finds himself investigating the financial schemes that secure the money of Tokyo’s elite investors....

Based on Pronko's 18 years living, teaching, and writing in Tokyo, these essays on how Tokyoites work, dress, commute, eat, and sleep....

Authentic and immersive, Tokyo Tempos takes listeners deep into the compelling rhythms of Tokyo life. Tokyo Tempos is the fourth in the Tokyo Moments Series.