Reviewer & Author Interviewer, Norm Goldman. Norm is the Publisher & Editor of Bookpleasures.com.
He has been reviewing books for the past twenty years after retiring from the legal profession.
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Author:Michael Pronko
Publisher: Raked Gravel Press 2018
ISBN: 978-1-9422410-16-4
With
his recent tome, The Moving Blade: A Tokyo Mystery Michael
Pronko has given his readers a great deal to chew on and digest. He
has crafted a yarn that includes a well-respected American diplomat
and expert on Japanese American relations, a corrupt member of
Japan's bicameral legislature or as it is referred to as The National
Diet, the transporting of nuclear waste as a result of the powerful
earthquake and tsunami that crippled Japan's Fukushima Dai-Ichi
nuclear plant, and the international agreement between the USA and
Japan known as the Status of Forces Agreement or SOFA which governs
facilities and areas granted to the USA as well as the status of US
armed forces in Japan. And thrown in for good measure are a few
murders that seem to be interlinked.
Author: Michael Pronko
Publisher: Raked Gravel Press 2018
ISBN: 978-1-9422410-16-4
With
his recent tome, The Moving Blade: A Tokyo Mystery Michael
Pronko has given his readers a great deal to chew on and digest. He
has crafted a yarn that includes a well-respected American diplomat
and expert on Japanese American relations, a corrupt member of
Japan's bicameral legislature or as it is referred to as The National
Diet, the transporting of nuclear waste as a result of the powerful
earthquake and tsunami that crippled Japan's Fukushima Dai-Ichi
nuclear plant, and the international agreement between the USA and
Japan known as the Status of Forces Agreement or SOFA which governs
facilities and areas granted to the USA as well as the status of US
armed forces in Japan. And thrown in for good measure are a few
murders that seem to be interlinked.
The novel opens where we
read about a break-in of an apartment located in Tokyo of an American
diplomat, Bernard Mattson. The thief was hired to retrieve two
important files, download them onto two USB drives, and erase the
computer before carrying the drives across town. During his escape,
the culprit is chased by a foreigner who demands that he turn over
the files, whereupon a fight ensues and the thief is stabbed to death
by a Tanto sword. One of the drives that the thief was hiding flew
out of his pocket and landed in a sewer while the other was found by
the thief together with a wad of ten- thousand yen bills. The
foreigner escapes with the drive-wiping DVD as well as the cash.
While all of this action is occurring, Jamie Mattson is at
the Shida Funeral Hall and Crematorium where her father, Bernard, who
was recently murdered lays in a casket. Jamie soon discovers that she
likewise is in danger and that the thief who broke into her late
father's apartment was after his research work that was to be
revealed in a speech he was to make at the opening of the conference
on Asian security and defense. She also learns that her father was in
the process of writing a book and that the manuscript of the book is
missing.
Detective Hiroshi Shimizu is assigned to the case
and immediately calls upon a recently suspended colleague to help
solve the murder of Mattson as he had been involved in a previous
murder where the murder instrument was likewise a sword as was the
case with Mattson. The two together with another detective set out to
solve the mystery and what they eventually uncover is mind-boggling
that even includes erotic images or shunga of ukiyoe masters that
were found on the stolen USB drive that the detectives managed to
retrieve. Apparently, as they were to discover, these masters knew
how to conceal politics in erotics and Mattson had been an expert on
these images. Moreover, they discover the book Mattson was about to
publish concerned SOFA and its deficiencies and he was laying the
groundwork for a new agreement between Japan and the USA. His work
would no doubt have a significant influence on Pacific Rim politics
however, there were people who did not take too kindly to what he had
discovered while doing his research at the national archives.
What immediately stands out in this fluid, ambitious snaky
thriller of great momentum is its immediate hook where Pronko manages
to arouse the reader's curiosity about who, what, where, when, how
and why? And he does not wait too long to introduce his principal
character, Detective Shimizu leaving no doubt that he is the lead. In
addition, he manages to stir emotions that keep his readers
identifying with Shimizu's feelings. Another aspect of the story that
is quite an eye-opener is how Pronko takes a knife to the heart of
the SOFA agreement between Japan and the USA and addresses the
broader question of some of its shortcomings and messy situations
that even involve criminal activities on the part of the Americans.
In the end and notwithstanding the complexity of the story, it is
narrated with a style and execution that is surprisingly
straightforward.
FOLLOW HERE TO READ NORM'S INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL PRONKO