The tale comes to a violent conclusion, or at least so it seemed. As a result, neither she nor the reader can be certain which events in the narrative are real. To stop them, she was prescribed some medication, but she stopped taking it. A movie major, she is prone to sudden waking hallucinations that usually take the form of scenes from the noir films she loves. And the twists, few of which readers are likely to see coming, arrive in such abundance that they are head-spinning.įrom moment to moment, neither Charlie nor the reader is ever sure how much danger she is in or whether Josh (if that is his real name), or perhaps someone else, is the person to be feared.Ĭompounding the problem is that Charlie, from whose point of view the story is told, has a tenuous grip on reality. A sense of dread arrives the moment Charlie enters the car and never stops building. The author (Riley Sager is a penname for New England author Todd Ritter) spins his yarn at a frantic pace. That may be so, Sager seems to be telling us, but you haven’t seen anybody do it like this. Second, a young woman stuck in a car with scary stranger is an overused trope of crime fiction. The strikes? First, Sager asks readers to believe that a young woman obsessed with her roommate’s murder would get into a car with a stranger.

Charlie is unsure if she can trust him, but her need to get away is so strong that she gets into his car for the long drive from New Jersey to Ohio.įor a thriller that starts off with two strikes against it, Riley Sager’s “Survive the Night” turns out to be a first-rate read.

That leads her to Josh, a somewhat older guy who says he is going her way. So she drops out, packs up her stuff, kisses her college boyfriend goodbye, and puts a ride share request on the school bulletin board. “Survive the Night,” by Riley Sager (Dutton)Ĭonfused and depressed Charlie can’t bear to stay at Olyphant University anymore - not since her best friend was stabbed to death by a serial murderer known as the Campus Killer. This cover image released by Dutton shows 'Survive the Night,' a novel by Riley Sager.

Survive the night sager