Donald Westlake is one of my favorite writers of crime and caper novels. I especially enjoy his series of comic crime novels featuring Dortmunder, a thief whose capers always manage to go awry. He is also the author of the much more gritty series featuring Parker which he wrote under the pen-name Richard Stark. Westlake died in 2008 but he left behind some manuscripts and unfinished novels that have since been published in the Hard Case Crime series. CALL ME A CAB is the last of these posthumous novels according to the publisher.
This one was actually written in the 1970s but sat on Westlake's shelves in various versions for over forty years. An abridgment of the novel did appear in Redbook Magazine but it was drastically cut down. So CALL BE A CAB is a suspense novel without any crime in it. The story is about a New York cab driver, Tom Fletcher, who picks up a beautiful woman, Katharine Scott, as a fare to Kennedy Airport. Katharine is on her way to Los Angeles to meet up with her boyfriend, a plastic surgeon named Barry. Barry has proposed to Katharine but she is not sure if she should accept. So she decides to hire the cab for $4,000 plus expenses to take her all the way to LA, a trip of five days or so. This will give her time to think about whether or not to accept Barry's proposal. Along the way, Tom and Katharine trade stories of their romances; they detour to drive a stranded woman in labor to a nearby hospital; they stop at three Kansas City airports before finding the one where a messenger with documents for Katharine to sign will be waiting; they share a pub crawl along the Kansas-Colorado border with an overgalvanized husband and wife who seem to have come straight out of a Prohibition musical; the cab breaks down at one point; and they spend one night at an outdated tourist camp with a very amenable older couple (the other nights they spend at very similar Holiday Inns). Of course Tom has pretty much fallen for Katharine along the way but eventually they do meet up with Barry. So what will Katharine's decision be??
Even though this was not a crime novel in the usual vein of Westlake, I did enjoy it a lot. It kind of reminded me of TRAVELS WITH CHARLY, Steinbeck's superb travelogue with his dog. This novel did show its age: pay phones and Checker cabs are things of the past. But Katharine is portrayed as a very independent woman back when women's lib was just coming about. I'm glad Westlake was such a prolific writer (he wrote more than 100 books, many under various pseudonyms) â I have hardly scratched the surface of his output so I'll definitely be reading more!
This one was actually written in the 1970s but sat on Westlake's shelves in various versions for over forty years. An abridgment of the novel did appear in Redbook Magazine but it was drastically cut down. So CALL BE A CAB is a suspense novel without any crime in it. The story is about a New York cab driver, Tom Fletcher, who picks up a beautiful woman, Katharine Scott, as a fare to Kennedy Airport. Katharine is on her way to Los Angeles to meet up with her boyfriend, a plastic surgeon named Barry. Barry has proposed to Katharine but she is not sure if she should accept. So she decides to hire the cab for $4,000 plus expenses to take her all the way to LA, a trip of five days or so. This will give her time to think about whether or not to accept Barry's proposal. Along the way, Tom and Katharine trade stories of their romances; they detour to drive a stranded woman in labor to a nearby hospital; they stop at three Kansas City airports before finding the one where a messenger with documents for Katharine to sign will be waiting; they share a pub crawl along the Kansas-Colorado border with an overgalvanized husband and wife who seem to have come straight out of a Prohibition musical; the cab breaks down at one point; and they spend one night at an outdated tourist camp with a very amenable older couple (the other nights they spend at very similar Holiday Inns). Of course Tom has pretty much fallen for Katharine along the way but eventually they do meet up with Barry. So what will Katharine's decision be??
Even though this was not a crime novel in the usual vein of Westlake, I did enjoy it a lot. It kind of reminded me of TRAVELS WITH CHARLY, Steinbeck's superb travelogue with his dog. This novel did show its age: pay phones and Checker cabs are things of the past. But Katharine is portrayed as a very independent woman back when women's lib was just coming about. I'm glad Westlake was such a prolific writer (he wrote more than 100 books, many under various pseudonyms) â I have hardly scratched the surface of his output so I'll definitely be reading more!
