Lindsey follows up his well-received The Falcon and the Snowman--the story of two young Californians, Chris Boyce and Daulton Lee, convicted of spying for the Soviets--with a headlong account of the 18-month manhunt for Boyce after his January, 1980 escape from a federal prison. Jurisdiction over prison-escape cases had just been turned over, grudgingly, by the FBI to the Federal Marshals Service, a 200-year-old institution that, critics said, peaked in the Wild West era and had since degenerated into a sleepy anachronism. The Marshals Service hierarchy knew it was essential to the future of their agency that they find Boyce. Which they did, after running down hundreds of crackpot ""leads"" and embarking on several time-consuming wild goose chases. So many people claimed that Boyce had ""really"" been a CIA agent, and had been broken out of prison by the spooks, that the investigators themselves began to wonder. An imprisoned ex-drug smuggling pilot known as ""Captain Midnight"" claimed he'd set Boyce up with his own prior drug-running connections. An ex-mercenary soldier led investigators (and an American TV news team) on a fruitless trek into the jungle of Costa Rica. Yet another ex-mercenary set up an elaborate deception (apparently without Boyce's knowledge), designed to show that Boyce had gone to South Africa; his credibility waned when he flunked a polygraph test and investigators found him talking to himself in a German accent. Meanwhile, Boyce assumed a new identity, made his way to the northern panhandle of Idaho (a laid-back place where some locals are not too keen on law enforcement, anyway), and probably would never have been found if he hadn't taken up bank robbery. Though very successful as a robber, Boyce ultimately had a falling-out (over a $100 loan) with one of his accomplices, who knew Boyce's secret and called the feds. By the time the not closed in, Boyce had moved to Washington's rugged Olympic Peninsula, had changed his identity again, was co-owner of a salmon fishing boat (he had contemplated an escape by boat to the USSR), and was taking flying lessons (the new escape plan). Boyce could probably have hidden forever in the Idaho mountains, so why did he run the risk of robbing banks? Probably for the same simple reason he betrayed his country--not money, but excitement. ""I'm a pirate at heart,"" Boyce once said, ""I'm an adventurer."" Fast-paced and gripping--and an obvious choice for those who read the first part of the Boyce saga; but not quite its knotty equal. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.