In Daniel Friedman's new novel, set in Memphis, Tennessee, and four months after the events of “Don’t Ever Get Old”, eighty-eight-year-old Buck Schatz is reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that he can only move around with the aid of a walker, and his dementia seems to be getting worse.
So, when one of Buck's long-time foes, a bank-robber named Elijah, comes to Buck looking for protection from mysterious pursuers, Buck wavers. In the end, his desire to cement his legacy by closing out a series of long-unsolved robberies overwhelms his usual antipathy toward doing favors for people he dislikes. Buck agrees to broker Elijah's surrender to the authorities, if Elijah will promise to confess to his long-ago crimes.
But nothing involving Elijah, or Buck, is ever simple, and Elijah's plans for Buck are more sinister than they first appeared.
Written in Buck's signature voice and featuring a mystery that will knock your socks off, “Don’t Ever Look Back” takes a decades-old feud between two dangerous, and now elderly, men and brings it to a final, explosive conclusion.
"Enjoy the plot, which even has a locked-room mystery packed into it. Savor the resonant prose as a reminder of how flabby much best-seller writing has become. Delight in Buck's deadpan humor, but don't fall for it. No codger cuteness here; his nastiness can shock."
Booklist
"Alternately humorous and moving sequel . . . The howdunit of the 1965 crime will please Golden Age puzzle fans."
