Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published May 2012
304 pages
Genre: Mysteries
Publication Information
This is the first in a one-of-a-kind, spectacularly well-written mystery series featuring Buck Schatz, an eighty-seven-year-old retired Memphis cop with a know-it-all plugged-in grandson as his sidekick. When Buck learns that an old adversary may have escaped Germany with a fortune in stolen gold, Buck decides to hunt down the fugitive and claim the loot. But lots of people want a piece of the stolen treasure, and Buck's investigation quickly attracts unfriendly attention from a Mississippi loan shark, a seven-foot tall Hasidic Jew and a bloodthirsty maniac hell-bent on rubbing out everybody who knows anything about the stolen gold. This is sure to be a big hit with readers who love Elmore Leonard, Walter Mosley, early Jonathan Lethem and superlative detective fiction in general.
BookBrowse Review
"Sadly, I was disappointed by Don't Ever Get Old, particularly from the humor standpoint. Most of it relies on the reader finding the main character's irascibility funny, but I found him to be somewhat mean-spirited and, in some respects, too close-to-home to be funny. But humor is very subjective, so if you find curmudgeons funny this might be the book for you. The plot is rather silly and improbable with a great many flaws. On the plus side, there were several poignant passages that did endear the character to me." - Kim Kovacs
Others Say
"Starred Review. A sardonically appealing debut for a detective who assures his long-suffering grandson, 'I care about people. I just don't like them.'" - Kirkus Reviews
"Starred Review. Friedman's excellent debut introduces a highly unusual hero, 87-year-old, politically incorrect Buck Schatz, a former member of the Memphis PD, who's become a living legend... Friedman makes his limited lead plausible, and bolsters the story line with wickedly funny dialogue." - Publisher's Weekly
"Daniel Friedman is the Jewish Elmore Leonard. Friedman is a master storyteller who can speed your heart up and stop it on a dime." - Andrew Shaffer, EvilReads.com
"Laugh-out-loud funny as well as surprisingly poignant. Kudos to Daniel Friedman for giving us a nearly ninety-year-old hero who's not going gently into that good night - he's going out with guns blazing, F-bombs flying and a pack of Lucky Strikes." - Lisa Brackmann, author of Rock Paper Tiger
This information about Don't Ever Get Old was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Daniel Friedman is a graduate of the University of Maryland and NYU School of Law. He lives in New York City.
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