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''A man's trustworthy only until you leave him alone with something that's worth more to him than his reputation.''
I have a soft spot for senior citizens. They are all facing the unique and terrifying ordeal of becoming more fragile and vulnerable by the day in complete solitude. The lucky ones lose their mind before their body gives up on them, but the process of natural death is equally frightening for everyone. Some go through it with more gusto than others, though, like Buck Schatz. Daniel Friedman's elderly hardboiled detective made a spectular debut in 2012 with DON'T EVER GET OLD, a novel with much sharper fangs than your run-of-the-mill detective mystery. Guess what? He is back in 2014, older and meaner than before in DON'T EVER LOOK BACK.
Buck was seriously hurt after the events of DON'T EVER GET OLD and left him with only a part of the mobility he once had. His wife Rose took on herself to move them into the Valhalla assisted-living facility, where they can live through the twilight of their existence as carefree as possible. The peaceful atmosphere she worked at creating around her husband is shattered one morning by the visit of Elijah, a criminal he swore to kill or drive out of town a long time ago. Elijah is looking for protection from mysterious pursuers. Torn between his relentless nature, his need for closure, his physical limitations and the well-being of his couple, Buck has one fire left to put out before walking in the sunset.
DON'T EVER LOOK BACK is a novel with different ambitions than DON'T EVER GET OLD, In the first novel, Daniel Friedman put his elderly detective through a hardboiled grind to see what would happen. I don't think any other authors are 1) as interested and 2) as talented as Friedman is to incorporate the reality of the elederly to genre literature. It's really a gift that he has to blend the realistic details of a senior citizen's existence, a terrific geezer sense of humour and killer storytelling skills together. It's what made DON'T EVER GET OLD an oasis of originality in the contrived genre of detective novels. While DON'T EVER LOOK BACK is a bona fide sequel, Daniel Friedman put commandable effort into his narrative, rather than just go through the motions of what made his debut novel successful.
If DON'T EVER GET OLD relied on the originality of its narrative, DON'T EVER LOOK BACK invests in several themes, most notably identity. Elijah being a career criminal and a master manipulator, he plays the story him and Buck share together to his advantage. It's a long and complicated story rooted in Judaism. Since Buck has been retired for longer than he's actually been a policeman, he doesn't feel like he belongs anywhere and Elijah expertly plays the loyalty card, sinking Buck back into an ocean of memories, in order to get what he wants out of him. DON'T EVER LOOK BACK is a more stern and more tormented novel than its predecessor, but it's also going into deeper and subtler shades of its standout protagonist.
The feel-good adrenaline rush of reading DON'T EVER GET OLD is not carrying over to DON'T EVER LOOK BACK and I believe it was a smart decision by Daniel Friedman to not even try to carry this kind of excitement and push the envelope too far, and instead going into a completely different direction with Buck Schatz. DON'T EVER LOOK BACK might be less exciting than DON'T EVER GET OLD, but it's a novel with its own, strong sense of identity, which still makes it more interesting than most detective novels. Let's appreciate Buck Schatz while we still have him, shall we? He's not a concept that can live eternally, although I'd gladly take a third novel as a sendoff for one of the memorable protagonist I had the opportunity of reading.