The Runner: A Novel - Softcover

Reich, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440234689 ISBN 13: 9780440234685

Publisher: Island Books, 2001

Synopsis

Christopher Reich dazzled readers and defied expectations with his New York Times bestseller, Numbered Account, a breathtaking classic of modern suspense. Now Reich returns to the world of international thrillers with a no-holds-barred powerhouse of a novel set against the seething backdrop of post—World War II Germany....

July 1945. U.S. attorney Devlin Judge has come to Europe as part of an international tribunal to try Nazi war criminals. But Judge has his own personal agenda: to find Erich Siegfried Seyss, the man responsible for his brother’s death.

An SS officer and former Olympic sprinter, Seyss has just escaped from a POW camp, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. But he won’t escape Devlin Judge.

Between the two men are miles of German countryside ... and the beautiful daughter of one of Nazi Germany’s most powerful families — a woman loved by them both.

But as Judge hunts his prey across a devastated nation, he finds himself caught up in a staggering conspiracy. Because Erich Seyss is no rogue SS killer. He is a man running a final race to make one last, unforgettable contribution to the Fatherland. And he is acting on orders from the last person anyone would ever suspect.

About this title

Review

Set against the backdrop of post-World War II Germany, The Runner is the story of Devlin Judge, an ex-New York City detective turned lawyer on the hunt for Nazi SS soldier Erich Seyss, recently escaped from an American POW camp. Seyss, a former Olympic track star known as "The White Lion," is responsible for myriad heinous war crimes, including the murder of a platoon of unarmed American prisoners--one of whom was Judge's own brother. Initially a member of the International Legal Tribunal, set to try former Nazis for crimes against humanity, Judge begs for the opportunity to track Seyss down. With only a week in which to do so, his hunt for the cold-blooded killer leads Judge to a race not only for his own life but for the future of Europe itself. Judge is pursuing a killer, but he is also chasing the ghosts of guilt, having decided not to enlist in the hopes of advancing his legal career: "Erich Seyss was his confession and his penance, his expiation and absolution, all tucked into a black-and-silver uniform with a death's-head embroidered on its collar and his brother's blood on its cuff."

The Runner lacks the crackling tension of Numbered Account, Christopher Reich's first novel. Even the moments of crucial conflict, or of bloody disaster, seem wan and pallid. The novel is, paradoxically, handicapped by Reich's respect for historical detail: his interest in presenting the grim realities of postwar existence leads him into extensive descriptions of place and time that fail to merge with the story he spins. These "set pieces" stand awkwardly apart, like dour history professors coaxed into supervising the machinations of rambunctious students. Reich's general fidelity to detail also means that the moments in which he temporarily throws accuracy to the wind are painfully apparent: how on earth would Judge, a well-fed and well-dressed American, manage to look as if he belonged in a German work-group detail? And when would any three-star general ever tolerate the gum-cracking insouciance of Judge's driver Darren Honey, a sergeant with no regard for military hierarchy? Oddly enough, the authorial liberties Reich takes with General George Patton, saddling him with a megalomaniac's hatred of the Russians and a schemer's plot to redraw the boundaries of postwar Europe, are largely successful and add a welcome note of barely contained evil.

The Runner works best as a moving meditation on personal and social disjunction: Judge, Seyss, Patton, and the rest are desperately engaged in deciphering the proper place for prewar rules in the postwar chaos--and in confronting the uneasy suspicion that perhaps, after all, there is no place for them or for their beliefs. Judge must move past his easy assumption that the Allied victory was not "just a symbol of superior might but of superior morality": "Overnight, he'd become the hunted, not the hunter.... At some point during the last twenty-four hours, he'd crossed over an interior median into unknown waters. He'd abandoned the rigid structure of his previous life, renounced his worship of authority, and forsworn his devotion to rules and regulation. He'd tossed Hoyle to the wind, and he didn't care." --Kelly Flynn

From the Back Cover

“A wonderful novel of conspiracy, treachery and political intrigue ... Reich evokes the fascinating world that existed between the hot war and the cold war — he is a master of atmosphere and detail.”
— Nelson DeMille, author of The Lion’s Game

“Irresistible.”
— The Wall Street Journal

“This is thriller-writing on the grand scale.”
— The Denver Post

“Fast-moving ... briskly paced ... The Runner confirms all the promise Reich showed in Numbered Account.”
— Chicago Tribune

“Move over, Jack Higgins and Robert Ludlum, Reich has grabbed hold of your genre and made it sing. The Runner is an intriguingly crafted cat-and-mouse hunt.”
— San Francisco Examiner

“Reich skillfully keeps us guessing.”
— Chicago Sun-Times

“Reich is good news for insomniacs who need an excuse to stay up till the wee hours.”
— Daily News (New York)
Don’t miss Christopher Reich’s New York Times bestselling thriller:

Numbered Account

Available from Dell

And look for Christopher Reich’s new hardcover:

The First Billion

coming in winter 2002 from Delacorte Press

About this edition

• Publisher: Island Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0440234689
• ISBN 13: 9780440234685
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 512