SOURCE: "The Copycat Crime," in Washington Post, February 29, 1996, p. B2.

[Limsky is a novelist, poet, educator, and critic. In the following review, he describes Nathan's Run as derivative of John Grisham's The Client.]

Few writers would envy the prose of John Grisham, marvel at the elegant ease of his language or aspire to the complexity of his characterizations, but there are no doubt hundreds of nascent pulp scribes hot to mimic the staggering commercial success of the lawyer turned bestselling author. John Gilstrap is one. Nathan's Run is just the kind of novel Grisham writes—in fact, he's already written it: The Client.

Grisham's 1993 book was about a street-smart 11-year-old who witnesses the suicide of a gangster and finds himself sought after by the mob and by a publicity-hungry prosecuting attorney; along the way, he secures as an ally a savvy female lawyer with a palpable maternal instinct...