Everything you have heard about NO EXIT is true: the advance praise from well-known authors, the challenges on Twitter (all variations on the theme of “start reading and try to stop”), and the laudatory reviews (such as the one you are about to read). Coming seemingly from nowhere, it is one of the year’s most unforgettable reads.

Taylor Adams is a film director and screenwriter who has had three novels (including NO EXIT) published in Great Britain. This is his American debut, and an explosive one, demonstrating his considerable multimedia chops from the first page, which will have everyone who reads it saying, “This should be a movie.” The story takes place over the course of an excruciatingly dangerous and violent 12 hours on the approach to Christmas when an ordinary college student named Darby Thorne, who is driving through the Colorado Rockies, gets caught in a nasty blizzard.

"...one of the year’s most unforgettable reads.... Adams does for highway rest stops what Stephen King did for shuttered resort hotels, psychotic nurses and clowns under bridges."

Darby is headed to Utah to see her dying mother, hoping to beat the Reaper, when she is forced to pull off the impassible highway and into an all-but-deserted rest area. There are three cars in the lot and four people --- three men and a woman --- in the building, who at first seem to be your simple random collection of humanity’s assorted flotsam and jetsam, seeking shelter and whatever nourishment can be had from the vending machines while the storm blows itself out and the state highway department clears away the afterbirth.

After warming herself up a bit, Darby goes back outside to try to find a place where she can scare up some signal bars for her cell phone. She doesn’t find the bars, but what she does find --- a girl locked in an animal crate in the back of one of the vehicles in the lot --- sends Darby and the plot of NO EXIT careening into places that no one in their right mind would ever want to go. It is obvious that someone in the rest stop is a monster --- who else would have such cargo in their car? --- and that the child must be saved. The questions immediately come to mind: How can Darby sort out who’s who? How can she rescue the girl? How can she enlist the remaining members of their involuntary little group to her cause? And how can she stay alive? The answers to all of these questions are variously “with great difficulty” and “maybe not at all.”

As if he doesn’t ratchet up the suspense to teeth-grinding level to begin with, Adams ever-so-thoughtfully divides his story into short chapters titled after the time of day, ticking down the minutes to when the cavalry may or may not be coming. The villain of the piece is not a career criminal, any more than Darby is a career hero. We’re talking total, unadulterated sadistic evil-in-a-nightmare creep up against the guts and nobility of a believable protagonist. Who is going to ultimately win --- if anyone does --- is a question that is answered after several firecracker conclusions, a number of twists and turns, and surprises that seem to arrive at the rate of one per page. Can you stop reading after you start? The better question would be: Can you read fast enough? The answer, at least in my case, was “no.”

About NO EXIT being made into a film… It’s going to happen. It has to happen. Adams lays it all out right there in the book, page by page. It wouldn’t take a huge budget to do it. If people in the industry aren’t camped on his front door with suitcases full of money, they are all missing out. And in case you were wondering, Adams does for highway rest stops what Stephen King did for shuttered resort hotels, psychotic nurses and clowns under bridges. And yes --- fair is fair --- NO EXIT stands up with King’s best work. Read it with a hat on. It will blow your brain right through your ears.