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)
