The Last Taxi Driver

Lee Durkee

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Paperback

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English

No Exit Press
01 October 2021

Fiction & Literature; Crime & Mystery

The Last Taxi Driver is a darkly comic novel about a day in the life of an exhausted, middle-aged cabbie about

to lose his job to Uber, his girlfriend to lethargy, and his ability to stand upright to chronic back spasms. Lou - a

lapsed novelist and UFO enthusiast who has returned to his home state of Mississippi after decades away -

drives for a ramshackle taxi company that operates on the outskirts of a college town among the trailer parks

and housing projects. With Lou's way of life fast vanishing, an ex-dispatcher resurfaces in town on the lam,

triggering a bedlam shift which will test Lou's sanity and perhaps cost him his life. Against this backdrop, Lou has to keep driving, and driving - even if that means aiding and abetting the host of

criminal misfits haunting the back seat of his Town Car.

Written by a former cabbie, The Last Taxi Driver careens through the highways and backroads of North

Mississippi as Lou becomes increasingly somnambulant and his fares increasingly eccentric. Equal

parts Bukowski and Portis, Durkee's novel is an homage to a dying American industry.

'A black comic delight... part Denis Johnson-ish carnival of the wrecked, part Nietzschean Twilight of

the Gods... there's a comic sweetness and energy underneath that reminds one of Charles Portis' -

Kirkus (starred review)

By: Lee Durkee
Imprint: No Exit Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 15mm
ISBN: 9780857304575
ISBN 10: 0857304577
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 01 October 2021
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Reviews for The Last Taxi Driver

The Last Taxi Driver is a Canterbury Tales for our time... Decentralized, atomized, and alternately tranquilized and jacked up on cheap beer and meth, this is the world of Beckett, Godard, Robbe-Grillet * Full Stop * Much of what makes Lee Durkee's novel so delightful and surprising is his ability to dig beneath the surface of this funny, well-told odyssey, which channels a Shakespearean tragedy. This twenty-year follow up to his debut novel, Rides of the Midway, was worth the wait -- Sara Webster * Chicago Review of Books * An enthralling Southern Gothic * Irish Times * A wild, sometimes surreal ride to oblivion in the company of Lou, a one-time novelist and writing teacher now driving a collection of drug addicts, alcoholics, psychotics and other misfits to various destinations in north Mississippi * Book Brunch * A picaresque sweep through the dark side of the American dream and full of gems and memorable observations -- Maxim Jakubowski * Crime Time *