The Hack Driver by Sinclair Lewis
Quick answer: The Hack Driver by Sinclair Lewis: full summary with the twist ending, characters, themes of appearance versus reality, and how Lewis builds the con.
A young city lawyer steps off the train in the village of New Mullion with a summons in his pocket and a low opinion of his errand. He needs to find one Oliver Lutkins, and by lucky chance the first man he meets, a cheerful, red-faced hack driver, knows Lutkins well and offers to drive him to every haunt in town. The reader is invited to enjoy the countryside, the picnic and the friendly guide, right up until the last page pulls the floor away.
Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, made his name puncturing the myths Americans told about small towns, and this short story is that career in miniature. It is a school favourite because it works twice over: once as a very funny con story, and once as a sly warning about how easily charm can do the work of lies.
The story in brief
The narrator, a freshly graduated junior assistant clerk at a city law firm, hates his job of serving summonses and is delighted to be sent instead to New Mullion, a village he imagines as sweet and simple. His task is to serve court papers on Oliver Lutkins, a witness needed in a case. At the station he meets a friendly delivery man who introduces himself as Bill Magnuson. Bill knows Lutkins, a man who owes money to half the town, and offers to hunt him down together in his hack for two dollars an hour. All day they chase the elusive Lutkins: to Fritz's place, where he plays poker, to Gustaff's barbershop, to the poolroom where he has just left, and finally to his mother's farm, where the enormous old woman chases them out of her kitchen brandishing a hot iron rod. At every stop Bill insists on going in first while the lawyer waits outside, so that Lutkins will not be tipped off. They share a delightful picnic lunch on a hill, and the narrator, thoroughly charmed by Bill's warmth and by country life, decides he would happily practise law in a place like this.
He returns to the city without his man and is roasted by his chief, since Lutkins is needed in court the next morning. He is sent straight back with a colleague who knows Lutkins by sight. At the New Mullion station the helpful hack driver is waiting again, and the companion identifies him at once: the hack driver is Oliver Lutkins. He had spent the day cheerfully driving his own pursuer around town, taking the firm's money by the hour, while neighbours enjoyed the show, and his mother had joined the performance with her iron rod. The summons is served at last, and the story closes with Lutkins and his mother laughing at the narrator as if he were a bright boy of seven. The joke lands on the reader as well, since we too were charmed.
The characters
Lewis needs only three people, and two of them are the same person.
Themes and meaning
The exam headline is appearance versus reality: the friendliest man in town is the fugitive, and the idyllic village is a stage set for a swindle. Close behind comes the puncturing of the pastoral myth. The narrator arrives believing country people are simpler and more honest than city people, and the story bills him, by the hour, for that belief. There is also a theme of vanity: he is fooled partly because being liked by Bill flatters him, and flattery is the con artist's oldest solvent.
The sharper point is that Lewis aims at both directions at once. The city lawyer's snobbery about hicks and his gush about rural virtue are the same error wearing different hats, since both replace looking at people with a theory about them. Lutkins wins because he is the only person in the story who deals in particulars: he reads exactly who this young man is and builds the day around it. The story's real moral is not that villages are wicked; it is that anyone who sees a category instead of a person is already halfway swindled.
The craft: a con that works on the reader
The story is told in first person, years later, by the victim, and Lewis exploits that retrospective voice with a straight face: the narrator reports his younger self's warm judgements about Bill without correcting them, so the reader is conned in real time alongside him. Reread the story and the mechanics are all in view, fair-play clues hiding as friendliness. Bill volunteers before he can be asked. Bill alone goes indoors at every stop while the mark waits outside. Bill knows every detail of Lutkins's habits, because they are his own. Even the mother's iron rod is overplayed just enough to be pantomime.
The structure worth stealing is the delayed identification. Lewis needs the revelation to arrive with a witness, so he builds the plot's one hinge, the narrator's failure and forced return with a colleague, out of the con itself. Nothing is bolted on: the twist is simply the day's events renamed. When you write a deception story, audit it Lewis's way: every scene must read one way before the reveal and a second, funnier way after, with no scene that only works once.
Why teachers keep assigning it
The story earns its syllabus seat because the irony is layered but the surface is friendly. Younger readers get a good trick; older readers get a study in how narrative voice can be an unreliable instrument without a single lie being told, since the narrator honestly reports everything and honestly misreads it. It also pairs beautifully with discussion questions about judgement: at what point could the narrator have caught on, and what belief was blinding him at that moment? There is rarely a better five-page introduction to satire, which corrects folly not with anger but with a bill for services rendered, two dollars an hour.
What poets can take from this
- For exams, lead with appearance versus reality and support it with Bill's insider knowledge and the mother's staged attack.
- Quote the closing image of the narrator being laughed at like a bright boy of seven to show how completely the tables turn.
- Note the narrator's early contempt for serving summonses; his snobbery and his sentimentality are twin causes of his downfall.
- Writers, make every clue to your twist double as innocent characterisation, the way Bill's helpfulness is both charm and cover.
- Keep your con artist likeable; the reader should half-wish the trick had worked even after it is exposed.
- Test a deception plot by rereading each scene after the reveal: it should make better sense the second time.
Try it yourself
Write a story in which a visitor arrives in a small community to find one specific person, and recruits a friendly local as guide. The guide is the person they are looking for. Play completely fair: every scene must contain one clue disguised as helpfulness, and the reveal must require a second witness.
Questions
What is the irony in The Hack Driver?
The central irony is that the lawyer hires Oliver Lutkins to help him find Oliver Lutkins. The man he is hunting drives him around town all day, charges him by the hour, and stages the search for his own amusement. There is added irony in the narrator praising the honesty of country folk while being swindled by one.
Why does Lutkins pretend to be Bill Magnuson?
Lutkins wants to dodge the summons, but the disguise is also sport. Posing as a helpful hack driver lets him control the search, keep the lawyer away from anyone who might identify him, earn money for the performance, and entertain the whole village at the visitor's expense.
What happens at the end of The Hack Driver?
Sent back the next day with a colleague who knows Lutkins by sight, the narrator finds the friendly hack driver at the station and learns that he was Lutkins all along. The summons is finally served, while Lutkins and his mother laugh at the young lawyer as if he were a child.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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