Call Me A Cab
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The final unpublished novel by MWA Grandmaster – a wild, romantic road trip across America by taxi cab – demonstrates why this beloved author is so fondly remembered and so dearly missed.
“A book by this guy is cause for happiness.”
Stephen King
DONALD E. WESTLAKE
GOES OFF THE BEATEN PATH
In 1977, one of the world’s finest crime novelists turned his pen to suspense of a very different sort – and the results have never been published, until now.
Fans of mystery fiction have often pondered whether it would be possible to write a suspense novel without any crime at all, and in CALL ME A CAB the masterful Donald E. Westlake answered the question in his inimitable style. You won’t find any crime in these pages – but what you will find is a wonderful suspense story, about a New York City taxi driver hired to drive a beautiful woman all the way across America, from Manhattan to Los Angeles, where the biggest decision of her life is waiting to be made. From Pennsylvania to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Nevada on the way to California, the characters’ odyssey takes them through uncharted territory – on the map and in their lives. It’s Westlake at his witty, thought-provoking best, and it proves that a page-turner doesn’t need to have a bomb set to go off at the end of it in order to keep sparks flying every step of the way.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fans of Westlake (1933–2008), the late master of crime capers both comic (The Hot Rock) and hard-boiled (Point Blank!), will not be disappointed in this perceptive romantic suspense novel. It's an ordinary day for New York City cabbie Tom Fletcher when he picks up beautiful Katharine Scott. To his surprise, she asks how much it will cost to drive her to Los Angeles; her plastic surgeon boyfriend, Barry Gilbert, wants to marry her and she intends to use the five-day trip to make up her mind. So Tom and Katharine start off on a cross-country odyssey in his yellow Checker Marathon. Along the way, they flirt, fight, get on one another's nerves, and develop a mutual respect that could possibly blossom into something more. The suspense derives from the question of whom Katharine will end up with—the cabbie or the plastic surgeon. Westlake expertly proves the old adage that it's better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Originally published in an abridged form in Redbook in 1978, the story is slight and dated (with references to the old Belmore Cafeteria and CB radios), but Tom and Katharine are charming leads. This entertaining story is as wistful as the theme from old episodes of Taxi.
