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Book Review: The Last Train by Michael Pronko

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TheLastTrain1About the Book

Detective Hiroshi Shimizu investigates white collar crime in Tokyo. He’s lost his girlfriend and still dreams of his time studying in America, but with a stable job, his own office and a half-empty apartment, he’s settled in.  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 was a woman, but in Japan, that seems unlikely. 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. To find her, Hiroshi goes deeper and deeper into Tokyo’s intricate, ominous market for buying and selling the most expensive land in the world. 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.

Format: ebook, Paperback (348 pp.)  Publisher: Raked Gravel Press
Published: 5th May 2017                      Genre: Crime, Thriller

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Last Train on Goodreads

My Review

When I interviewed Michael on my blog last year (click here to read the full interview), he described The Last Train as ‘more whydunit than whodunit’ and having now read the book I can certainly understood why he said that. Much of the excitement of the book comes from following detective Hiroshi Shimizu in his attempts to identify and track down the mysterious woman who committed the murder. The trail leads Hiroshi from the flashy malls and smart high-rise buildings to the decidedly seedier world of hostess clubs and bars. As the author explains, “…in the novel, I wanted to look beneath the surface. The giant skyscrapers and constant construction are amazing, but there’s a lot going on behind the go-go big-city bright-lights, and a lot of it not so good.”

As the investigation progresses, Hiroshi begins to understand the threat he faces from vested interests who may be involved in the shady dealings he starts to uncover. He also starts to realise just what a clever and ruthless opponent he is up against and to get an inkling of the motivation that drives her. When the full facts are revealed you may find yourself questioning where true justice lies.

What really sets The Last Train apart from other run-of-the-mill crime thrillers for me was its Tokyo setting. I loved learning all about Japanese culture and customs. Take this scene in which Hiroshi and his boss, Takamatsu, drink sake together in the traditional manner.

‘The master pulled back a brown curtain over a glass-sided refrigerator filled with sake bottles. He pulled out two small chilled glasses from the top shelf and set these on the upper counter inside small, square, cedar wood boxes. The master shuffled the dozen or so bottles inside the fridge until he found the ones he wanted. Carrying these to the counter, he hoisted the large bottle of cold sake and, cradling it in the crook of his arm, poured out the clear, clean liquid. The sake flowed gently over the top of the lip of the glass into the box, arousing the aroma of cedar and fresh rice. He poured out sake from a different bottle for Hiroshi and placed both bottles on the counter so that each displayed the artful calligraphy of their labels.

They bowed down like penitents to take the first sip without spilling. Then they plucked up the small, thumb-sized glasses for a silent toast before downing the second gulp. Finally, they poured the spill-over from the cedar box into the glass, took another sip, and set their half-full glasses back inside the wet cedar boxes.’

The book cleverly brings to life the intriguing juxtaposition of ancient and modern that exists in Japan. So you have temples and prayer rituals, the elaborate customs for greeting and for drinking tea. But at the same time you have the modern malls full of shops selling up-to-the-minute designer goods and the latest technology, and the packed subways and neon-lit sidewalks of Roppongi.

‘People streamed out of subway exits, slid out of taxis, and stepped off bus after bus. Hordes of office workers in dull gray pants and dark skirts blocked corners, shouting directions into their cell phones to those yet to arrive. Fashion-conscious hipsters, mini-skirted amateurs, and yakuza wannabes walked to their favourite places to play, eat, drink, or work.’

The work culture with its emphasis on drinking with colleagues after work, to my eyes at least, seems particularly alien and the position of women quite regressive with real antipathy in some quarters towards women whose behaviour is considered ‘un-Japanese’.

I really enjoyed The Last Train for both its compelling storyline and its use of Tokyo as a location. Luckily for me – and I suspect, other readers – the author is working on two further books in the series: Japan Hand, which explores the relationship between Japan and the American military bases; and Thai Girl in Tokyo, which has two great female characters navigating the dangers of Shibuya’s underground nightlife. Both books are due for publication in 2018.

In three words: Atmospheric, compelling, mystery

Try something similar… Wolves in the Dark by Gunnar Staalesen (click here to read my review)

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MichaelPronkoAbout the Author

Michael Pronko is a professor of American Literature and Culture at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo and writes about Japanese culture, art, jazz, and politics for Newsweek Japan, The Japan Times, Artscape Japan and other publications. He has appeared on NHK Public TV, Tokyo MXTV and Nippon Television. His website, Jazz in Japan can be found at http://www.jazzinjapan.com/. His award-winning collections of essays about life in Tokyo are: Beauty and Chaos: Slices and Morsels of Tokyo Life (2014), Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens: Essays on Tokyo (2014), and Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo (2015). He has also published three essay collections in Japanese. When not teaching or writing, he wanders Tokyo contemplating its intensity and waiting for the stories to come.

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Throwback Thursday: The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

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ThrowbackThursday

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by Renee at It’s Book Talk. It’s designed as an opportunity to share old favourites as well as books that we’ve finally got around to reading that were published over a year ago. If you decide to take part, please link back to It’s Book Talk.

Today I’m reviewing a book that I only recently acquired but that was published back in 2012. It’s one of those books where you feel you must be the last person in the world to get around to reading it. It’s The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.

The Snow ChildAbout the Book

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart – he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm, she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season’s first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning, the snow child is gone – but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

Format: ebook (423 pp.)                   Publisher: Headline/Tinder Press
Published: 1st February 2012          Genre: Literary Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

 

Find The Snow Child on Goodreads

My Review

Followers of my blog (hello, you 500 or so lovely people) will know that I’m not a real fan of books with a fantasy or supernatural element. I do realise that statement will be anathema to an awful lot of people!   However, if the story is well-told, has wonderful characters and a superb sense of place then I too can fall in love with a story which also has a mystical or supernatural component. As The Snow Child had those first three things (in abundance), I’m happy to say the aspect of the story which is in essence a retelling of a Russian folktale didn’t mar my enjoyment of the book overall.

Whether the child that appears following the construction of the snow girl by Mabel and Jack is a real girl or the snow girl come to life didn’t really become the focus of the book for me. What I really fell in love with was Mabel and Jack, their life together and the author’s depiction of the harsh but beautiful Alaskan landscape. I really loved that we get to see a relationship between two older people and that, despite the pressures of trying to eke out a living in the wilds of Alaska and their shared grief at not being blessed with a child of their own, there are still moments of tenderness between them. I grew fond of their idiosyncrasies such as Mabel’s habit of waiting until dinner was served before broaching a difficult subject (so Jack’s beans got cold again).  And I loved their moments of playfulness – snowball fights, making snow angels, ice-skating, dancing.

The descriptions of the landscape of Alaska were really wonderful, conveying both its beauty, isolation and its dangers.

‘The sun was setting down the river, casting a cold pink hue along the white-capped mountains that framed both sides of the valley. Upriver, the willow shrubs and gravel bars, the spruce forests and low-lying poplar stands, swelled to the mountains in a steely blue. No fields or fences, homes or roads; not a single living soul as far as she could see in any direction. Only wilderness. It was beautiful, Mabel knew, but it was a beauty that ripped you open and scoured you clean so that you were left helpless and exposed, if you lived at all.’

There many other things I enjoyed about The Snow Child:

  • The picture of daily life
  • Esther and George – larger than life characters and true friends to Mabel and Jack
  • The sense of community and the willingness of neighbours to come together when help is needed
  • The sheer courage, resilience and determination of pioneers like Mabel and Jack, and Esther and George in attempting to carve out a living in such an unforgiving environment
  • The celebration of ‘indoor’ skills like preserving, baking and sewing and ‘outdoor’ skills like trapping, tracking, foraging
  • The wisdom of Mabel’s sister, Ada, in her letters:

‘We are allowed to do that, are we not…? To invent our own endings and choose joy over sorrow?’

‘In my old age, I see that life itself is often more fantastic and terrible than the stories we believed as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees.’

I’m grateful to Zuky, who runs the wonderful Book Bum Book Club on Goodreads, for coming up with the theme for December of Baby, It’s Cold Outside that motivated me to read The Snow Child.   It’s a lovely book, full of magical moments and deserving of the praise it has received.

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In three words: Magical, atmospheric, emotional

Try something similar…The Good People by Hannah Kent (click here to read my review)

Eowyn IveyAbout the Author

Eowyn Ivey’s first novel, The Snow Child, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and an international bestseller. Her newest novel To the Bright Edge of the World was released in August 2016. Eowyn was raised in Alaska and continues to live there with her husband and two daughters.

Connect with Eowyn

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