Running Out of Road

Buck Schatz makes a welcome return in Edgar finalist Friedman’s thoughtful third mystery featuring the retired Jewish cop (after 2014’s Don’t Ever Look Back). In 2011, Carlos Watkins, the producer of a true crime podcast, reopens one of Buck’s old cases. Chester March is finally about to be executed for killing his missing wife after decades on death row in Tennessee. Flash back to 1955 when Schatz was a junior detective with the Memphis PD. His first contact with March, an affluent white man, makes Schatz instantly suspicious, and his conviction that March is a killer intensifies after he learns of the 1953 murder of a black prostitute, who was seen by another prostitute getting into March’s car. Despite the evidence Buck amasses, the district attorney refuses to proceed on the basis of “testimony of a negro whore and a Jew detective.” Friedman gradually reveals how March eventually ended up facing lethal injection. Segments from Watkins’s show nicely explore whether the death penalty is ever appropriate. John Grisham fans looking for more nuance and deeper characterizations will be rewarded. Agent: Victoria Skurnick, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary. (Mar.)