Thomas Williams is the kind of novelist you keep calling "a young writer." He won a National Book Award for "The Hair of Harold Roux," and "Town Burning" and "Whipple's Castle" added to his reputation. Then you realize he's 52 years old, a distinguished college professor publishing his eighth book, and well on his way to being "remembered."

Most authors have to die, or stop writing, to make that grade. But every so often a novelist comes along who can win immortality with one foot still planted in the day-to-day world. Williams is trying to do that now, and with "The Followed Man" he comes closer to success than most other popular writers with such high literary hopes….

In this book, people with good stories to tell are allowed to tell them, and Thomas Williams keeps it all under firm control. His novel is written out of the accumulated...