What do you think?
Rate this book
Night Driver
So this was it, he thought. He had his first fare and was now officially a cab driver. He shook his head as he exhaled the smoke into the morning cold. Well, he’d use the taxi time just as he had promised himself. He would figure things out, get a hold on himself, keep some little money coming in, and find the men who had murdered his wife.
Nick Cullen's wife was brutally murdered in a burglary gone horribly wrong, and he's not the type to move on with his life, especially when he has seen the faces of the murderers in person. His plan: learn how to drive a cab so he can find his wife's murderers on the streets of Los Angeles.
Nick's nighttime rides lead him down dead end after dead end, until one day he manages to get a hold of the ID of one of the men who destroyed his life. Nick's chase heats up and he's forced to face the truth of how far a man will go who has nothing left to lose.
Night Drivertakes the reader on a white-knuckled thrill ride through the dimly lit streets of nighttime Los Angeles and into the dark heart of a man pushed to the brink. An unforgettable journey of obsession, sadness, and revenge.
Nick Cullen's wife was brutally murdered in a burglary gone horribly wrong, and he's not the type to move on with his life, especially when he has seen the faces of the murderers in person. His plan: learn how to drive a cab so he can find his wife's murderers on the streets of Los Angeles.
Nick's nighttime rides lead him down dead end after dead end, until one day he manages to get a hold of the ID of one of the men who destroyed his life. Nick's chase heats up and he's forced to face the truth of how far a man will go who has nothing left to lose.
Night Drivertakes the reader on a white-knuckled thrill ride through the dimly lit streets of nighttime Los Angeles and into the dark heart of a man pushed to the brink. An unforgettable journey of obsession, sadness, and revenge.
472 pages, Hardcover
Published January 16, 2018
2 people are currently reading
27 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 30, 2018
Not bad at all.
February 15, 2019
“Night Driver” by Ronald Colby is a tense journey through 1970’s Los Angeles after dark. Colby artfully weaves an episodic tapestry of characters together through his protagonist’s haunting and singular need to visit justice on the killers who tore his life apart. Broken and unable to find peace, the ‘night driver’ becomes a hunter seeking either vengeance or death from behind the wheel of his taxi cab. With evocative description and visceral detail, "Night Driver" is a neo-noir classic.
May 30, 2018
Night Driver is more than a crime novel, though it is a great one of those, too. It bristles with heart and humanity and casts a fine photographer's eye over Los Angeles at night in the 1970s. Nick Cullen is a character you're not going to want to let go of. This book is so complete, but leaves you wanting more. Let's hope there's a sequel.
March 2, 2018
Ronald Colby's Night Driver is an entertaining evocative noir thriller set in Los Angeles in the 1970s. The sense of place and time rings true at every turn. And twists and turns this story has as you cruise the city at night. Highly readable. Give it a try.
June 29, 2018
A pretty decent thriller with a cool angle in the cab driver protagonist. Stumbles a few times with wonky timelines, a few ancillary characters that were slightly unnecessary, and perhaps could have been trimmed down by 50 pages to make it a tad ,ore streamlined.
February 22, 2021
I didn’t want this book to end and savored it as much as I could. Nick Cullen hunts his wife’s killers driving a taxi on the streets of Los Angeles. A mix of Taxi Driver and Nightcrawler, with hints of Elmore Leonard and George Pelecanos. Funny, dark, violent. Everything I want in a book.
June 24, 2018
A thriller that also gives you insight into Los Angeles of the 1970s. Recommended (and not just because my uncle wrote it! ;)
September 12, 2025
Gritty. Could this book have been 100 pages SHORTER? Yes. Would I have enjoyed it if it was 100 pages LONGER? Yes. Solid Read.
October 26, 2020
A cool, cold heart beats slowly and steadily through the heat and heart of the night in this dark tone poem to 1970s Los Angeles, full of hustlers and cigarettes and drugs and the kind of leering, thumping music that can—and often does—drive men on the make to murder.
In NIGHT DRIVER, it's 1976, and once darkness falls, Nick Cullen prowls the freeways and streets of LA from behind the wheel of his taxi cab. He picks up despondent people and druggies and disco habitues and dark passengers with dead eyes, but his real work is trying to get a line, however thin and frayed, on the three men who murdered his wife and baby in a home-invasion robbery gone insane. Night after night, Nick smokes, drinks, takes drugs, takes propositions, deals with death dealers and his own demons, driving, driving, driving under blue lights and buzzing neon signs. He stops only for a few hours of fitful sleep and to get in the face of the police detective who shares his frustrations but isn't willing to go as far as Nick is to find the killers.
The killers themselves? They don't even think about it. They've moved on, to other towns, other scores, other hustles. But LA always pulls them back. That's their salvation, or so they think.
All it takes is one break. One tiny break. And when it comes, everybody involved senses that their world is going to break wide open.
Imagine TAXI DRIVER meets NIGHT MOVES meets AMERICAN GIGOLO meets THIEF, a story full of sinister shadows and searing heat and smoke curling around sweaty bodies. Sweaty from sex, from guilt, from insensate need. Imagine if Paul Schrader and Michael Mann and Monte Hellman and Charles Bukowski collaborated on a coherent, cold-as-switchblade-steel, super-cool screenplay. Then you'd get the dark, pulsing vein of NIGHT DRIVER.
In NIGHT DRIVER, it's 1976, and once darkness falls, Nick Cullen prowls the freeways and streets of LA from behind the wheel of his taxi cab. He picks up despondent people and druggies and disco habitues and dark passengers with dead eyes, but his real work is trying to get a line, however thin and frayed, on the three men who murdered his wife and baby in a home-invasion robbery gone insane. Night after night, Nick smokes, drinks, takes drugs, takes propositions, deals with death dealers and his own demons, driving, driving, driving under blue lights and buzzing neon signs. He stops only for a few hours of fitful sleep and to get in the face of the police detective who shares his frustrations but isn't willing to go as far as Nick is to find the killers.
The killers themselves? They don't even think about it. They've moved on, to other towns, other scores, other hustles. But LA always pulls them back. That's their salvation, or so they think.
All it takes is one break. One tiny break. And when it comes, everybody involved senses that their world is going to break wide open.
Imagine TAXI DRIVER meets NIGHT MOVES meets AMERICAN GIGOLO meets THIEF, a story full of sinister shadows and searing heat and smoke curling around sweaty bodies. Sweaty from sex, from guilt, from insensate need. Imagine if Paul Schrader and Michael Mann and Monte Hellman and Charles Bukowski collaborated on a coherent, cold-as-switchblade-steel, super-cool screenplay. Then you'd get the dark, pulsing vein of NIGHT DRIVER.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews