This is now my favorite road trip book, a perfect summer read. Katharine Scott has a difficult decision to make and maybe she can give herself time and space to make it by persuading New York cabbie Tom Fletcher to drive her to Los Angeles. The resulting weeklong trip becomes a chance for the two strangers to get to know one another; the story in this long-buried manuscript is also a trip back in time for the reader, to the 1970s, complete with identical Holiday Inns, CB radios, diners, drinking, and midcentury feminism. Apparently, this crime-free book was a departure for Donald Westlake—I’ve never read anything else by him—but his keen observations, smart humor, and subtle characters didn’t need crime to make it suspenseful. Does the guy get the girl, or is that even the point? I loved this story.