Midnight Cab - Softcover

Nichol, James W.

3.64 out of 5 stars

469 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841957925 ISBN 13: 9781841957920

Publisher: Canongate U.S., 2006

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A three-year-old boy is found abandoned and clinging to a wire fence at the side of a country road, terrified. Sixteen years later, Walker Devereaux is in Toronto to discover the truth about his biological mother and start his life in the city. Working as a cabdriver, Walker befriends Krista, a pretty, demanding, wheelchair-bound night dispatcher. Krista and Walker are fast friends, and she can't help but involve herself with Walker's quest to understand his shrouded identity. Soon enough, though, their little off-hours sleuthing turns perilous as they come within the deadly grasp of a man whose own early abandonment has turned him into a desperate and violent psychopath.

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From the Back Cover

“Canadian writer James W. Nichol has turned his riveting 35-part radio drama into his first novel, and it’s a spellbinder” -- Toronto Sun

“[a]n impressive debut….Nichol weaves all this churning emotion into a tight, complex narrative replete with red herrings and sudden outbursts of violence….Just as the late great mystery writer L.R. Wright turned the pastoral Sunshine Coast in British Columbia into a nightmarish swamp, James W. Nichol extracts a creepy sense of menace from Ontario’s cottage country.” -- Hamilton Spectator, 9 March 2002

“A must-read from one of Canada’s best playwrights…” -- Ottawa Citizen, 10 March 2002

“Refreshing….I read the book in one fell swoop.” -- Vancouver Sun, 23 February 2002

“A delightful ride…. Now fans of the widely popular CBC radio program Midnight Cab will step on it to pick up James W. Nichol’s book of the same name…. Nichol’s reality-based descriptions of Toronto are delightful….Hyptnotic….Nichol’s elegantly simple and taut prose becomes addictive.” -- Rebecca Caldwell, The Globe and Mail, March 2, 2002

“Take one nineteen-year-old determined to discover the identity of his parents, team him up with a rebellious young woman tied as much to her family as to her wheelchair, and threaten him with the sick violence of an unknown psychopath. The result: a mesmerizing story of two unforgettable people whose pairing is as gratifying as it is unlikely.” -- Timothy Findley

“ Midnight Cab is a superb piece of suspense fiction which somehow manages to be warm and chilling at the same time.” -- John MacLachlan Gray

From the Inside Flap

Hailing from a small Northern Ontario town, Walker Devereaux, age nineteen, is in Toronto to discover the truth about his early life, the years leading up to the age of three when he was found abandoned on a country road, terrified and clinging to a wire fence. He had no identification but in his pocket was a photograph of two young girls splashing in a lake and a chatty letter from a teenager. His clothes were well cared for, and a dim memory of his mother even now assures him that he was loved. But he wants to know who his mother was, and why she abandoned him, and whether he had a father.

At the cab company where he works, Walker befriends the night dispatcher, Krista, a pretty, brave young woman. Wheelchair bound but resourceful, she helps him crack the code of his parents? identity. But the quest to discover his mother?s whereabouts swiftly becomes perilous as Walker finds himself within the deadly grasp of Bobby, a young sociopath who has matured from early cruelty to murderous pleasure.

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