In 2025, we lost one of the world’s most talented authors when Andrew Pyper passed away following a battle with cancer. He also wrote under the pseudonym Mason Coile. In those novels, he explored ideas and genres that he never ventured into before.

DRIVEN is Coile’s final book, and it is a winner from start to finish. Coming in at around 200 pages, it is a true one-sit reading experience that defies you to put this electric novel down. The first page tells you almost everything you need to know about Jamie Newcross before his full backstory is revealed. He is moving for the fourth time in very recent memory into a lousy basement apartment next to a highway in suburban Toronto. We learn that his wife and daughter left him, and he lost his job as a high-paid attorney. Lately, he has little ambition and does not work while rarely leaving his dismal abode.

"DRIVEN is a beautiful, chilling and insightful novel that hooked me on page one and became one of the most unique novels about grief that I have ever read. I deeply miss Andrew Pyper."

With his retirement cashed out and living off his savings, Jamie figures he has perhaps one final windfall purchase to make. He receives a call from a man who saw an old posting he had made looking for a Lion, the world's most advanced self-driving car, which is extremely rare and quite expensive. Theo Quinn, a wealthy businessman, has grown tired of his and is looking to sell it at a very affordable price. Jamie is interested, even when Theo admits that it has a major defect --- it doesn’t talk. This doesn’t bother Jamie, and he figures he could always get it repaired at the dealership. He makes the purchase and is driven away by his new vehicle.

The initial ride is so comfortable that Jamie falls asleep. When he wakes up, though, he is in the parking lot of a park. After exiting the car, he finds some blood and gore on the windshield, and the hood is a bit banged up. He learns on the news that a hit-and-run left someone dead, and he realizes that his car is to blame. The more he thinks about it, the more he wonders if Theo had set him up to be the patsy new owner of a car that had been programmed to kill one of his enemies, as the victim was a member of organized crime. He aims to find out, but first he must survive the ride that he is taken on against his will.

Jamie orders the vehicle to drive him home, but instead it takes him to different locations, most of which are from his own past --- his family home where he grew up, the house he lived in with his wife and daughter, and, lastly and most poignantly, the amusement park near the street where a drunk driver crashed into him years ago and changed his life forever.

Jamie’s apartment has shown some signs of being haunted, or at least trying to send him a message. Now, he is able to get the computer screen of the Lion to communicate with him, and it seems to know way too much about him. Eventually, the truth will come out as we realize along with Jamie what the whirlwind tour the car took him on was really all about and the end that was always in mind for everyone involved. 

DRIVEN is a beautiful, chilling and insightful novel that hooked me on page one and became one of the most unique novels about grief that I have ever read. I deeply miss Andrew Pyper.