The Midnight Taxi

Lately I’ve been getting into mysteries again, and I was excited for this week’s new release, The Midnight Taxi by Yosha Gunasekera. This debut novel follows Siriwathi, a Sri Lankan immigrant and taxicab driver in New York City. While working late one night, she picks up a man on his way to the airport, but by the time she makes it to his destination, the man is dead. More specifically, he’s been stabbed. Who murdered him? And how, given that he was in her taxi the whole time? Siri is the obvious suspect, and she’s determined to clear her name—and find the real killer—before she gets locked away for a crime she didn’t commit.

What I Liked:

• Takes “locked room murder mystery” to a new level! I always love a mystery set to a confined space and with limited suspects, but The Midnight Taxi takes that to the extreme. How could anyone possibly have murdered a man in the back of Siri’s taxi while she was driving it? Siri gets the help of a public defender, Amaya; together, they play detective as they try to work out the who, how, and why of this odd case. From exotic pets to pizza parlors to environmental justice, this takes some unexpected turns along the way.
• Siriwathi is obsessed with true crime podcasts. Will they help her out now? Driving around NYC so much leaves Siri with a lot of time to listen to her podcasts, and she’s really into solving true crime mysteries from the comfort of her taxi. But how will those podcasts help her once she’s in the middle of a murder investigation now? Though she’s in over her head at first, I like how Siri put her secondhand knowledge to good use throughout her investigation. Turns out she could make quite the detective!
• Facing racial and gender discrimination. Siri is Sri Lankan, and she’s dealt with a lot prejudices and cruelty since moving to the United States as a kid. This impacts how she acts when she first notices that her passenger is dead, and it comes up within her internal monologue a lot. She also bonds with her lawyer, Amaya, over their shared heritage.
• Grappling with loss and her life path. Siri’s older brother passed away two years earlier, and it’s something she and her parents are still working through. This adds a heavier element to the book. Siri also deals with self-doubt, in part related to how she viewed her brother as so much more deserving than her. Is she proud to be a taxi driver? Does she strive for anything else… and if so, is she brave enough to go after it?
• Humorous commentary. The above aside, The Midnight Taxi is actually quite funny from the first chapter to the last. Siri constantly makes silly observations, and her dry humor maintains a levity to this cozy mystery. I enjoyed being in her head for these 336 pages.

Final Thoughts

The Midnight Taxi is a fun and fresh mystery, and I flew through it. The mystery is twisty and unexpected, I enjoyed learning about Sri Lankan culture and food, and Siri is a charming character. This is the first in a series, and I’m excited to see what case Siri and Amaya tackle next!

Special thanks to the publicists at Penguin Random House, Berkley, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy The Midnight Taxi here – it’s available as a paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

The Midnight Taxi by Yosha Gunasekera
Series	(#1)
Audience	Adult
Genre	Contemporary Mystery
Setting	NYC
Number of Pages	336
Format I Read	Audiobook & Ebook (NetGalley ARCs)
Original Publication Date	February 10, 2026
Publisher	Berkley

Official Summary

When the last fare of the night turns up dead in her backseat, a Sri Lankan American taxi driver works off the clock to clear her name in this mystery novel by debut author Yosha Gunasekera.

Siriwathi Perera doesn’t quite know where she’s going in life. She never expected to be a taxicab driver in New York City, struggling to make ends meet and still living with her parents at twenty-eight. The true-crime podcasts that keep Siri company as she drives don’t do much to make up for the legal career she imagined for herself, or the brother she’s grieving.

When public defender Amaya Fernando gets into her cab, they make a quick connection through their shared Sri Lankan roots. Siri, whose social circle is limited to her grade-school best friend, Alex, thinks things might finally be looking up with this new potential friendship. But she’s suddenly dropped into her own true crime when she discovers her next passenger murdered in the backseat, and she has to call Amaya sooner than she’d expected.

Pinned as the obvious and only suspect, and desperate to clear her name, Siri chases down leads across the boroughs of New York City with Amaya’s help. But with her court date looming, they have just five days to find out who really killed the midnight passenger—or Siri’s life will be over before she can even truly live it.