In order to win, Charlie must do one thing–survive the night. What follows is a game of cat-and-mouse played out on night-shrouded roads and in neon-lit parking lots, during an age when the only call for help can be made on a pay phone and in a place where there’s nowhere to run.

Is Josh truly dangerous? Or is Charlie’s suspicion merely a figment of her movie-fueled imagination? As they travel an empty highway in the dead of night, an increasingly worried Charlie begins to think she’s sharing a car with the Campus Killer. There’s something suspicious about Josh, from the holes in his story about his father to how he doesn’t seem to want Charlie to see inside the car’s trunk. Like the Hitchcock heroine she’s named after, Charlie has her doubts. For Josh, it’s to help care for his sick father. For Charlie, it’s guilt and grief over the murder of her best friend, who became the third victim of the man known as the Campus Killer. Both have good reasons for wanting to get away. They met at the campus ride board, each looking to share the long drive home to Ohio. Josh Baxter, the man behind the wheel, is a virtual stranger to Charlie. Bush is in the White House, Nirvana’s in the tape deck, and movie-obsessed college student Charlie Jordan is in a car with a man who might be a serial killer.

Riley sager book to movie