The Runner - Hardcover

Reich, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385333668 ISBN 13: 9780385333665

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 2000

Synopsis

In his stunning, bestselling debut novel Numbered Account--hailed by The New York Times as "smart," "sophisticated," and "wonderful"--Christopher Reich created a breathtaking classic of modern suspense. Now he returns to the electrifying world of international thrillers with an intricately plotted tale of cat and mouse set against the seething backdrop of post-World War II Germany. At once explosive, beautifully textured, and vividly paranoid, The Runner is a no-holds-barred powerhouse of a novel.

July 1945. Devlin Judge, an American lawyer and former New York City police detective, has come to Europe as part of the International Military Tribunal to try Nazi war criminals. But Judge has a very personal agenda--to find the Nazi responsible for his brother's death: a man named Erich Seyss. An elite member of Hitler's SS and former Olympic sprinter known as the White Lion, Seyss has just escaped from an American POW camp. Determined to avenge his brother and bring Seyss to justice, Judge plunges into immediate pursuit. Menaced at every turn by forces determined to keep him from his prey, he enlists the help of Ingrid Bach, the beautiful daughter of one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany...and Seyss's former fiancée.

To track Seyss through the chaos of a destroyed nation, Judge will put his life on the line to reveal the dark conspiracy surrounding him. For as the hunter becomes the hunted, the chase for the White Lion becomes nothing less than a race to save the future of Europe itself.

Unfailingly gripping, rich in historical detail, and brilliantly atmospheric, The Runner is a true masterpiece of riveting storytelling.

About this title

About the Author

Christopher Reich was born in Tokyo in 1961. A graduate of Georgetown University and the University of Texas at Austin, he worked in Switzerland before returning to the United States to pursue a career as a novelist. He lives in Texas with his wife and children.

Christopher Reich lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and daughter. -->

From the Back Cover

"This is a wonderfully well written book, a sophisticated story of political intrigue, conspiracy, and treachery. Reich's evocation of post-war Germany in ruins has an uncanny sense of you-are-there; a trip into virtual reality--the author is a master of moody atmosphere and historic detail. A fascinating look at the world that existed between the hot war and the cold war, populated by larger-than-life characters who gamble for incredibly high stakes."
--Nelson DeMille, author of Lion's Game

"[Reich] keeps the pages turning."
--The Detroit Free Press

"A hefty thriller, authentic-seeming in historical fact and...as irresistible as a big postwar Technicolor movie."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Dark and tough and extremely entertaining...[The Runner] has one of the most audacious twists ever tacked on to the end of an already satisfying story."
--Daily News (New York)

"The best thing about this novel is its evocation of the terrible chaos of war-shattered Europe during the first few months after V-E Day....[the hero's] search for his brother's killer turns into a race against time for the fate of Europe."
--The Chicago Sun-Times

Praise for Numbered Account:

"Smart and sophisticated...Wonderfully credible."
--The New York Times

"Reich keeps things moving at breakneck speed."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Fascinating...The tension crackles."
--People

"Chilling detail, suspense, and intrigue."
--The Denver Post

"Big story...Big enjoyment...A completely different kind of thriller."
--Newsday

From the Inside Flap

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 dev

Reviews

Reich's first novel, Numbered Account, did remarkably well for a debut. Unfortunately, Reich has hit upon a stale notion for his follow-up, and although the book moves along smartly, it feels mechanical in both plot and characters. Set in Germany just after the WWII surrender, it stars ace Nazi Olympic runner Erich Seyss, who as an SS man has performed untold atrocities--including the murder, in a massacre of unarmed American soldiers, of hero Devlin Judge's brother. That motivates Judge, a lawyer who is supposed to be prosecuting G?ring at the War Crimes Tribunal, to drop everything and set off in hot pursuit of Seyss when he escapes from a POW camp. Seyss is no ordinary escapee, but is being groomed by a band of German arms industrialists who want to revive their shattered country by turning the Americans against the Russians. How better to do it than by having an apparent Russian assassinate Churchill, Truman and possibly Eisenhower as well at Potsdam? Seyss throws himself into the role with vigor, energy and an amazing number of hairbreadth escapes. Meanwhile, Judge's pursuit is hampered by devious OSS operatives who want just what the Nazis want, for their own reasons; even General George Patton is involved, with apparent tacit support from Field Marshal Montgomery. Seyss's beautiful former lover, Ingrid, further complicates matters. The only remotely believable part of all this is the despairing postwar atmosphere of Germany in smoking ruins, which Reich brings to life with many sharply observant touches. But there's more to bestsellerdom than swift action and a long man-on-man chase against the clock, and most of The Runner is likely to strike fans of Ludlum and Forsyth as overly familiar. Agent, Richard Pine. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An American lawyer who is helping to try Nazi war criminals has an ulterior motive: he wants to find his brother's killer.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reich, whose first novel Numbered Account (1997) met with critical and popular success, presents a new work that's equally consuming. This one sets Devlin Judge, a lawyer involved with the International Military Tribunal after World War II, in Europe hunting down war criminals. One in particular, Erich Seyss, a member of Hitler's elite SS and a former Olympic runner, has met Judge's personal wrath; the reason--Seyss butchered Judge's brother, a Jesuit priest and army chaplain. Seyss, originally imprisoned by the Allied forces, cleverly escapes amid illegal American dealings. A cat-and-mouse game ensues throughout postwar Europe, and when Seyss realizes he is being hunted, his predator becomes his prey. Along the way, Judge enlists the help of many, including Seyss' former fiancee. Conspiracies abound as Judge treks around the continent in pursuit or, just as often, being pursued, and he realizes that absolutely nothing is as it appears to be. As Judge races through a war-ravaged continent, he discovers that he will not only save himself but also influence the fate of Europe. Reich was trained at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, and his intimate knowledge of international intrigue presents the reader with a genuine insider's look at historical diplomacy, reminiscent of le Carre. There should be big demand for this one. Michael Spinella

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

At nine o'clock, on a warm July evening in the Bavarian Alps, Erich Seyss stepped from the doorway of his assigned barracks and walked briskly across the grass toward the burned-out stable that housed the prisoners' latrine. He wore a shapeless gray uniform that carried neither rank nor insignia. No cap adorned his head. Only his arrogant gait and undaunted posture remained to identify him as an officer of the German Reich. In the distance, the sun's last rays crowned snowcapped peaks with a hazy orange halo. Closer, and less angelic, twin barbed-wire fences and a succession of spindly-legged watchtowers surrounded a five-acre enclosure, home to three thousand defeated soldiers.

POW Camp 8, as it was officially designated by the United States Army of Occupation, sat in a broad meadow on the western outskirts of Garmisch, a once chic resort that in 1936 had played host to the Winter Olympic Games. Until three months earlier, the compound had served as the headquarters of the German Army's First Mountain Division. Like Garmisch, it had escaped the war unscathed--weathered, perhaps, but untouched by a single bomb or bullet. Today, the assembly of stout stone buildings and low-slung wooden cabins housed what Seyss had heard an American officer refer to as "the scum and brutes of the German Army."

Seyss smiled inwardly, thinking "the loyal and proven" was more like it, then jogged a few steps across the macadam road that bisected the camp. In contrast to his relaxed demeanor, his mood was turbulent, a giddy mix of anxiety and bravado that had his stomach doing somersaults and his heartbeat the four-hundred-meter dash. To his left ran the prisoners' barracks, a row of stern three-story buildings built to sleep two hundred men, now filled with a thousand. Farther on hunched a weathered cabin that housed the radio shack, and ten meters past that, the camp commander's personal quarters. Barely visible at the end of the road was a tall wooden gate, swathed in barbed wire and framed by sturdy watchtowers. The gate provided the camp's sole entry and exit. Tonight, it was his destination.

In ten minutes, either he would be free or dead.

He had arrived at the camp in late May, transported from a hospital in Vienna where he had been recovering from a Russian bullet to his lower back. The wound was his third of the war and the most serious. He'd suffered it in a rearguard action against lead elements of Malinovsky's Ninth Army, maintaining a defensive perimeter so his men could make it across the Enns River and into the American zone of occupation before the official end of hostilities at midnight, May 8. Surrender to the Russians was not an option for soldiers whose collar patch bore the twin runes of the SS.

A week after his surgery, a chubby American major had showed up at his bedside, a little too solicitous of his good health. He'd asked how his kidney was and confided that a man didn't really need a spleen. All the while, Seyss had known what he was after, so when finally the major demanded his name, he gave it voluntarily. He did not wish to be found in two months' time cowering in his lover's boudoir or hiding beneath his neighbor's haystack. Peeling back his hospital smock, he had lifted his left arm so that the SS blood group number tattooed on its pale flank could be read. The American had checked the group number against that written on his clipboard, then as if declaring the patient cured, smiled, and said, "Erich Siegfried Seyss, you have been identified by the Allied powers as a war criminal and are subject to immediate transfer to an appropriate detention facility where you will be kept in custody until the time of your trial." He didn't provide any specifics as to the nature of the crimes or where they were alleged to have taken place--on the Dnieper, the Danube, the Vistula, or the Ambleve, though Seyss acknowledged it might have been any one of those places. The major had simply produced a pair of handcuffs and locked his right hand to the bed's metal frame.

Recalling the moment, Seyss paused to light a cigarette and stare at the fiery silhouette of the mountains surrounding him. He considered the charge again and shook his head. War crimes. Where did the war end and the crimes begin? He didn't loathe himself for acts from which other, lesser men might have shrunk. As an officer who had sworn his loyalty to Adolf Hitler, he had simply done as he'd been told and acted as honorably as circumstances did or did not allow. If the Allied powers wanted to try him, fine. He'd lost the war. What else could they do?

Dismissing his anger, Seyss cut behind the hall, then traversed a dirt infield littered with bales of firewood. Dusk brought quiet to the camp. Prisoners were confined to their barracks until dawn. GIs freed from duty hustled into town for a late beer. Those staying behind gathered in their quarters for heated games of poker and gin rummy. He walked slower now, guarding the shambling pace of a man with nowhere to go. Still, a sheen of perspiration clung to his forehead. He ventured a glance at the wristwatch taped high on his forearm. Three minutes past nine. Tonight everything would hinge on timing.

Fifty feet away, a lone sentry rounded the corner of the latrine. Spotting Seyss, he called, "Hey, Fritz, get over here. Time for bed check. What're you doing out?"

Seyss approached the GI, pleased he was precisely on schedule. "Just have to make a pee," he answered in English. "Plumbing's messed up and gone to hell. No hard feelings, though. It was Ivan's doing, not yours." Born of an Irish mother and a German father, he'd grown up speaking both languages interchangeably. He could recite Yeats with a Dubliner's impish brogue and quote Goethe with a Swabian's contemptuous slur.

"Just give me your pass and shut up."

Seyss retrieved a yellow slip from his pocket and handed it over. The pass cited an irregularly functioning kidney as grounds for permission to visit the latrine at all hours.

The sentry studied the slip, then pointed at his watch. "Bedtime, Fritz. Curfew in five minutes."

"Don't worry, Joe. I'll be back in plenty of time for my story. And don't forget a glass of warm milk. I can't sleep without it."

The sentry handed him back the pass, even managing a laugh. "Just make it snappy."

Edition details

• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385333668
• ISBN 13: 9780385333665
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448