At All Costs

From Kirkus Reviews Mr. and Mrs. Middle America take it on the lam from an army of law enforcers when a routine check reveals that they're high on the Most Wanted list. Fifteen years ago, newlyweds Jake and Carolyn Donovan worked for Enviro-Kleen, a firm whose scrubbing of a gas-laden army ammunition plant touched off what came to be known throughout the nation as the Newark Incident, a catastrophe that left all 16 of their co-workers dead and hundreds of square miles of the Arkansas countryside contaminated with radioactive waste. The sole survivors, the Donovans, were promptly branded ecoterrorists responsible for the holocaust, and promoted to the top of the FBI's dance card. Only the money and help provided by the one-man Witness Protection Program run by Carolyn's uncle, ruthless Chicago developer Harry Sinclair, allowed them to escape the feds and reemerge as Jake and Carolyn Brighton. Now, as they hustle their dazed son Travis, 13, out of his school and off to the storage locker they've had stocked with food and weapons and transport and new identity papers, they insist to the boy that they never did anything wrong; every scrap of evidence against them was planted. By now, readers of Gilstrap's sizzling debut novel, Nathan's Run (1996), will have realized that he's recycled the same plot--the innocent on the run from massive, untrustworthy forces of authority--but pumped everything up (beginning by substituting an entire family for the solitary child) by making it bigger, faster, noisier, and longer. Especially longer. Before they've finally vindicated themselves--not a big surprise, since in scene after scene everybody gets shot but them--Jake and Carolyn have tracked the Newark Incident to the very highest levels of the government, and Gilstrap has ingeniously twisted his simple premise six ways from Sunday. Does for families what Nathan's Run did for preteens--puts them through endless rounds of entertainingly action-packed pursuit. (Film rights to Arnold Kopelson) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. John Gilstrap made the best-seller lists with his first novel, NATHAN'S RUN. Now he's back with AT ALL COSTS, which belongs on the same lists. Jake and Carolyn Brighton have been on the run for 14 years and on the FBI's Most Wanted list the entire time. The bureau, and the rest of America, are convinced that the Brightons shot more than a dozen of their co-workers and blew up an Army weapons storage depot containing chemical weapons - all in the name of a clean environment. They are the worst kind of eco-terrorists. Except the Brightons are innocent. Unfortunately, they have no idea who is responsible for the crime. They just know that the circumstantial evidence against them is enough to put them in prison for the rest of their natural lives. For the past few years they've lived in the small-town South. They've had a son. They've seemed safe. But a freak arrest of Jake sends them off and running again. This time they decide to go on the offensive. They must discover the real criminals or lose their lives and their son. Gilstrap, an environmental engineer, proves in this novel he's also an expert on how people talk and think. -- Houston Chronicle, July 19, 1998