5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A double black diamond thriller, April 29, 2003
As his canon develops, Mr. Gilstrap's fiction seems to be edging away from the imperiled-family-on-the-run suspense thrillers for which he was becoming typecast and this is an evolution that Atria Books, Gilstrap's imprint within Simon & Schuster, thankfully encourages.
Scott O'Toole is not Nathan Bailey redux. Nathan, the title character in Gilstrap's incredible debut NATHAN'S RUN, is eluding capture by both the police and some bad men who want him dead. Sixteen-year-old Scott O'Toole is running toward something, namely a cabin in the middle of the Utah wilderness after his plane crashes that is his only shot at survival.
In that cabin is a mysterious man who claims to be in the witness protection program. But as Scott waits out a terrific blizzard, less and less adds up and his savior doesn't appear to be what he claims. The president of the United States is in town and when the bodies start piling up around the cabin like cordwood, Scott puts two and two together and begins a Nathanesque run back to civilization.
Gilstrap is obviously enamored of the movies, and he's tried and failed to make a career as a produced screenwriter. Still, his love of movies prevails and SCOTT FREE would've benefited from less allusions to specific movies, genres and cinema in general that Gilstrap obviously threw in to make producers realize, Look, see how cinematic my book is!
Gilstrap's saving grace is that SCOTT FREE, despite its shameless attempts to cozy up next to and identify with action/adventure films, remains one of the freshest and most captivating concepts since Jan Burke's BONES and Michael Prescott's NEXT VICTIM. Scott O'Toole does nothing that a gutsy, level-headed sixteen-year-old boy couldn't do with the proper training and a few aids. The conflict between his estranged parents is not a mass-produced he said-she said one and once again Gilstrap draws the reader into not only the violence of the story but the human conflicts that help illustrate and even bring about the more sensationalistic aspects. Scott's father is a devoted dad who'd be lost without the younger half of "Team Bachelor" while his mother, a self-help pop psychology icon and a bestselling author, is more concerned with ensuring that local bookstores stock her titles in abundance than with being a mother.
The writing of SCOTT FREE isn't quite as snappy as usual and very little of the humor that characterized Gilstrap's first three efforts are in evidence. The characterization, as stated before, is very good, a cut above what Gilstrap had offered in his next-to-last book, EVEN STEVEN. The mysterious man in the cabin is a creepy guy painted with light brush strokes of pathos, someone on a more human scale than the vicious Lyle Pointer of NATHAN'S RUN.
The thrilling, penultimate chapter that takes place on the ski slopes of Utah fades to black and fast-fowarding months later just before the reader actually sees what happened is a trick that directors have been doing since time immemorial and only reinforces the belief that Gilstrap is once again soliciting Hollywood's attention. His republican bias makes a rare, ugly appearance in the acknowledgements page in which he wishes that he could've researched classical music instead of the Metallica beloved of his title character (obviously Gilstrap hasn't heard of that heavy metal group's incredible work with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra).
Overall, I have to give SCOTT FREE four stars based on the vivid characterization, the ending that's almost as exciting as skiing a black diamond trail and the last-minute twist. Gilstrap still hasn't produced anything nearly as thrilling or heart-wrenching as his debut effort and it doesn't look as if he will. But his subsequent novels have a proven entertainment factor that's all too uncommon in the dull sea of generic books that come out every year.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Average read for thriller fans., March 15, 2003
John Gilstrap knows to write, I know that and I liked most of all his books "Nathan's Run". This book was brilliant. But Mr. Gilstrap has never since found a similar voice and well arranged story. "Scott Free" is not much more than what you expect of, for example, the usual Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie. The characters are not much more developed, you read what you would see on the big screen if this book is ever made to a major motion picture. This book should have been a hundered pages longer. The characters are not as well developed as you possibly could in a book. Mr. Gilstrap's style of writing is absorbing, but he lacks the wit he put into the pages of "Nathan's Run" and the well thought ideas he came up with in his first novel. Now he is more mainstream. In this story would have been so much more to explore about any character in this book. Scott's mother would have been a great character if explored more in depth. The attemps are there. But as I said, he would have needed about a hundred pages more to do so. Now it is just a nice summer read for the beach, not much more. The story is so foreseeable, that some twists aren't that surprising at all. The story of the sniper is not too well explored either. You can't really connect to Scott either, he seems too much like a superhero and has knowlege of any surviving skills. Some ideas in this book are too hard to believe. Its a nice read though. But it doesn't touch the reader as "Nathan's Run" did.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fast Moving, March 19, 2003
This fast-moving thriller kept me up late at night as I read the story of a young boy, lost in the freezing wilderness, pursued by the bad guy(s). As I read along, I was forced, however, to suspend belief because the action in this book just did not compute with my sense of reality and there were so many things that just did not make sense to me.
For one thing, Scott has just too many super-powers for a boy of his age and background. This was detrimental to the story because I found myself saying "yeah, right, sure" so many times.
I also found several major errors of fact and this was most distracting. I would have expected better research. Like another reader, I think Gilstrap's best book was "Nathan's Run"...it was so well-done.
I gave this book a "4" because it kept me involved and the story moved quickly. I would give it a "3" for content, however.
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