RUNNING OUT OF ROAD by Daniel Friedman (Minotaur). And—yes! A new Buck Schatz mystery, just the third, after a 5-year wait while Friedman was putzing around somewhere. This is, of course, the one-time inconveniently Jewish Memphis police detective, lately a private investigator who still manages a .357 magnum. When he must. A little shakily. But now almost out of his 80s and a little further into dementia . . . and it's the best ever. But no more heavy handgun; his physical deterioration is no longer even that deniable. Much of the case in this one is given us in flashbacks to his time on the force, but the frame, as always, is his precarious present, not denying but furiously defying the battle in his mind between disintegrating memory and still vigorous cognitive functioning. His tolerant but not-kidding-herself wife gets a bit more attention in this one, too. She has always been made real to us, but we begin to know her at some depth, now; she may be facing an end even closer than his, and they aren't either of them kidding themselves about that, either. More than in the earlier two, this one is Buck relating events and feelings in the past, speaking in first person still, but more clearly, dispassionately. The case is complicated, gritty, harsh. The resolution seems pretty certain to be the execution of a guy Buck decades ago beat a confession out of. We never doubt the guy's guilt—Buck doesn't, and Buck never was a fool, or a dirty cop. But tension mounts—that isn't all that's at stake—and the denouement is harrowing, to tell the truth. But worth it.

REVOLVER ROAD: A HARPER MCCLAIN MYSTERY by Christi Daugherty (Minotaur). And a seriously promising new series (this is just #3) and character, and author—the author has been a journalist, in Savannah, Georgia, among other places, and her central character is a crime reporter in Savannah, a unique but not quite exotic city to visit in real life, with—no surprise—a dark side to be visited cautiously, maybe from a distance, with this terrific still-new crime writer.

EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE: FIRST LOVES AND LAST TALES by Oliver Sacks (Vintage). I'd willingly have made a career of hanging around this guy, listening to him talk. His voice is that rich, complex, and gentle, in these last essays as always. Last ever, that is, much of it written in the awareness that he was dying (though that's not their subject, at all). A paperback reprint, from last year's bestseller.

HIT LIST: A STONE BARRINGTON NOVEL by Stuart Woods (Putnam). The 53rd of this endlessly inventive, energetic, entertaining series; watch the bestseller list for the next couple of weeks.