Daniel Friedman has crafted an engrossing page turner of a read in Running Out of Road. Well worth the read!

A truly unique tale, underlining the fact that hindsight can sometimes be painful and difficult to face with honesty. I loved the characters and the interactions between them, and Mr. Friedman brilliantly captured the crackling tension lying beneath the surface. A fast read, it's one of those book you don't want to end. Highly recommended.

*Thanks to both the publisher and the author for allowing me to read an ARC of this book free of charge, in exchange only for an honest review."

Great read! Highly recommended for anyone who likes a good, slow burning crime story.

Baruch "Buck" Schatz is almost ninety years old, has dementia, and needs a walker to get around. He's been retired for something like forty years but once upon a time he was a legend in the Memphis police department. In the '50s he was known as a tough Jewish detective who wasn't afraid to "bend the rules" as he saw fit. Or, as others have put it, he was a notoriously brutal cop who had no qualms about beating a confession out of somebody.

In 'Running Out of Road' the year is 2011, Barack Obama is president, and an investigative true crime show called American Justice is taking a look at one of Buck's most famous cases. The case of Chester March, an eighty year old man who has spent the last thirty-five of those years on Death Row. Chester March who maintains that he is an innocent victim of Buck Schatz. That Buck beat a false confession out of him... Chester March who has run out of legal arguments and is scheduled to be executed very soon.

This is a great premise that is, you'll pardon the expression, executed very well. In the here and now Buck's memory is not good. He forgets the names of his healthcare aids, he seems to fade in and out of conversations, he keeps forgetting that his wife is ill... But his memory of the past is spot on perfect.

The story shifts effortlessly back and forth between the modern day version of Buck, to the hard-nosed detective in his prime working a murder case, to eighty year old Chester Marsh trying to make a case for his own innocence. The story gets pretty intense as these storylines begin to converge in "real" time.

Except for the obvious - modern day Buck's own confusion in trying to cope with things that are often just out of his mental reach - the story never gets muddled or hard to follow. An outstanding novel from author Daniel Friedman.

I didn't realize until after I'd finished that this book is part of a series featuring Baruch "Buck" Schatz so I am very confident in saying that it works quite well as a stand alone.

A favorite quote from the book "I like to tell people I've buried all my enemies. I don't like to talk about how I've buried all my friends."

This is very much a hardboiled novel with rough language and some graphic description of violence. Buck Schatz is not politically correct in the least and some more sensitive readers could find parts of this book offensive.

***Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and author Daniel Friedman for providing me with a free digital copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

This is the third Buck Schatz novel, though it can be read as a standalone, the storyline does not include much detail from the previous two novels. Though reading those would give you a better idea of Buck’s character. And he is quite the character, unrepentant, blowhard and tough as nails even at 89 years of age. Buck, back in the 70’s, had arrested and obtained a confession from Chester March, who was accused of murdering his landlord, he is convicted of the murder and sentenced to death. Chester is thought to have committed a string of murders, but is only convicted on the landlord one. The book is told in three parts, present day, from the 70’s when Buck was a Detective and investigating Chester and from an NPR podcast. The execution date for Chester is looming and the NPR reporter is talking with him about it and the possibility that he had been brutally beaten by Buck to extract the confession. The NPR also wants to talk to Buck about the same issues, but he repeatedly declines. The story moves along at a steady pace, I did find some of the death penalty discussion a tad tedious at times, though the author did well to cover all sides of a complex issue. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

In his day, police detective Buck Schatz was a feared and respected member of the Memphis Police Department, but that was a long time ago and now his biggest worry is what to do with his 72 year old, sickly wife. Buck isn’t doing too well himself and he keeps what little remains of his sanity be reliving his past. And now his past has come roaring back into the headlines, as a man he put away for multiple murders has finally run out of pardons and has received an execution date. A national news feed has picked up the story and believe that the confession was forced out of the convicted serial killer. Now, Buck will find himself and his career tried in the court of public opinion. This is the most unique police procedural/mystery I’ve ever read and does an amazing job of portraying what age and dementia can do to even the strongest person. A must read