THE BALLAD OF THE RUNNING MAN

Rex Buchanan, a writer, finds a more rewarding way to live- by dying, and he creates new identities, is- successively- fatally ill, drowned and the victim of a plane crash, and so becomes the beneficiary of several insurance policy payoffs. But the fear of exposure leads to another kind of crime, costs him his wife, and makes him a fugitive without a destination. . . The fraudulence here is bona fide entertainment and introduces a different mood and mode for this writer.