Publication Date: February 10, 2026
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.
The Midnight Taxi by Yosha Gunasekera is her debut novel and a pleasant read. Set in New York City, with a lot of locales known to me, kept me turning the pages to see whodunnit when a dead person is found early on.
A cozy mystery has a body found in a taxi at midnight when the taxi driver, Siri, is dropping him off at the airport, and he doesn’t get out. From there, she and her public defender with Legal Aid, Amaya, who she only found by chance after giving her a taxi ride before the dead body, take us on a wild ride through the boroughs with multiple stops. Siri and Amaya are both Sri Lankan, and their culture is woven throughout. Siri’s best friend Alex is actively involved in helping clear her name, or is he just saying what she wants to hear?
Siri has always loved legal podcasts, and that helps her and Amaya to investigate and determine who the real murderer is. But she’s not enamored of the system since the police arrested her and think it’s a slam dunk. At least friends and family managed to bail her out so she can determine the truth even if the cops won’t. There are clues carefully uncovered, but lots of red herrings and many surprises, too. And when someone you don’t know keeps showing up where you are, that has to mean something, right?
The story has a lot of moving parts, some good guys and bad, and many secrets. Seeing how Siri and her lawyer synced in several ways was helpful to her case, even if she had to be her own advocate at times. There is closure with the unveiling of whodunnit but the ending seemed a little rushed. I loved the excerpt from the next book, and I look forward to meeting the characters again.
The Midnight Taxi is a cozy mystery with likable good guys, a murderer to be found, and the grit of New York City.
Yosha Gunasekera is a Sri Lankan American attorney who represents people who have spent decades behind bars for crimes they did not commit. She teaches a course at Princeton University focused on wrongful conviction and exoneration. Yosha is a former Manhattan public defender and has written and spoken extensively on the criminal legal system.
