NATHAN'S RUN

A preteen locked in a juvenile detention facility for car theft kills a supervisor, breaks out, and leads the police on a chase from Virginia to Pennsylvania. At least that's what it looks like—though actually Nathan Bailey is as innocent as the next 12-year-old. He stole the car only to get away from his uncle Mark, the hated guardian who's secretly after his inheritance; he killed the supervisor only in self-defense; and he's being pursued not only by the red-faced police but by a contract killer as well. Nathan doesn't know about the contract killer, but he blurts out the rest of his story at the first opportunity to Denise Carpenter, the self- styled ``Bitch'' of NewsTalk 990, during her phone-in radio program, and the audience, cueing the gentle reader, goes bananas (eventually, calls run 3 to 1 in his support). Gone to ground in a vacationing family's home, the slight, blond, resourceful Nathan—an obvious role model for most of the 12-year-olds you know—sweeps up the glass he broke getting in, washes the linens, and leaves an apologetic note for the surprised homeowners. (A second note to a different family remarks in passing that he's taken their handgun.) Meanwhile, county cop Warren Michaels and his good-cop friends sweat to bring Nathan in before damn-the- First-Amendment county prosecutor J. Daniel Petrelli or well- connected hit-man Lyle Pointer can pin down his location and blow him away. First-timer Gilstrap doesn't clutter this scenario with any unnecessary physical descriptions, psychological background, or moral complexity; like a roller-coaster, the story races along on well-oiled wheels to an utterly predictable but undeniably pulse-pounding conclusion. The Fugitive with Oliver Twist in the title role—and a surefire summer read for the family-values crime buffs who lapped up The Client. (First printing of 100,000; film rights to Steifel Phillips Productions and Joel Silver; Literary Guild Alternate; $175,000 ad/promo; author tour)