HUNTING ERIC RUDOLPH

This is a suspenseful account of the five-year hunt for the man behind the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Park bombing. Eric Rudolph is now also facing federal charges for bombings of a gay nightclub and two abortion clinics in Atlanta and Birmingham, Ala. Descriptive anecdotes of Rudolph and his family help Schuster, a CNN senior producer, and Stone, former head of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Anti-Terrorist Force, illustrate how a man on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List with a million-dollar reward on his head managed to elude the FBI for years by hiding out in the mountains of North Carolina. Exposed by his mother to the radical racist and anti-Semitic Christian Identity movement, Rudolph became a white supremacist opposed to the government, gays and abortion, who may have been helped by sympathetic neighbors during his years as a fugitive. The authors avoid turning their subject into a romantic outlaw by fully describing those who were killed and maimed by the explosions he allegedly set. Schuster and Stone also point to errors committed by the FBI, such as their initial pursuit of an innocent man (Richard Jewell) and their preventing a local sheriff from picking up Rudolph early. 16 pages of b&w photos. Agent, Faye Bender of Anderson-Grinberg Literary Management. (Mar.)