The Runner

by Christopher Reich Narrated by Stephen Lang

Overview

Rarely has a first novel achieved the kind of breathtaking critical acclaim garnered by Numbered Account, hailed by The New York Times as "smart," "sophisticated," and "wonderful." With The Runner, Reich dazzles us once again. Set against the seething backdrop of post-World War II Germany, The Runner weaves a complex and intricately plotted tale of cat and mouse.

At the center of this fiercely compelling story is Devlin Judge, an American lawyer in Europe as part of the International Military Tribunal to try Nazi war criminals. Haunted by his own demons, Judge has a secret agenda--to find Erich Seyss, the Nazi responsible for his brother's death. An elite member of Hilter's SS and former Olympic sprinter known as "The White Lion," Seyss has just escaped from an American P.O.W. camp. Determined to avenge his brother and bring Seyss to justice, Judge is plunged into immediate pursuit, menaced at every turn by forces determined to keep him from his prey. Threatened from all sides, he'll enlist 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 pay the ultimate price, putting 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 no-holds-barred powerhouse of a novel--a true masterwork from one of the most original storytellers to enrich the modern suspense novel.

Editorial Reviews

bn.com Review

Reminiscent of the works of Ken Follett and Fredrick Forsythe, Christopher Reich's second novel (following the blockbuster, The Numbered Account), The Runner, is a tour de force of post-World War II intrigue set in a defeated, but still writhing, Germany. The Runner is a breakneck-paced story that does justice to all perspectives involved; in it, both the innocent and the guilty on each side of the war must face their own aspirations and personal guilt as they are drawn into head-on confrontations with their enemies and themselves.

The notorious SS soldier Erich Seyss, a former Olympic runner nicknamed the "White Lion," has escaped from an American POW camp where he's been imprisoned for appalling war crimes. Devlin Judge, an ex-Brooklyn-cop-turned-lawyer, is in charge of interrogating and prosecuting Goering, but decides instead to go on the hunt for Seyss, who is responsible for the murders of 70 unarmed American soldiers including Judge's own brother, a Jesuit priest. Although Judge's commanding officers are reluctant to allow him to head the search, he eventually earns one week to recapture Seyss before being forced to return to his position in the International Legal Tribunal.

Germany is in ruins: The country is without electricity, proper sewage control, a police force, or even a government. It has also been divided into zones of Allied occupation, virtually whittled down into pieces. Enter Egon Bach, a wealthy industrialist who plans to put Seyss to good use now that he is once again free. Along with a small group of other industrialists -- who call themselves the Circle of Fire -- Bach intends to do all that he can in order to preserve what remains of Germany's integrity. In one week, American, British, and Russian leaders will gather to decide the fate of Germany. With relations between Russia and America so sensitive, Bach and the Circle of Fire intend to use Seyss to kick start a war between the world powers, in turn positioning Germany as an American ally.

Christopher Reich's snappy delivery adds new dimension to the WWII scenery as he convincingly reconstructs life in post-war Germany, giving us memorable scenes of suspicion and conflict as hostilities still spark in devastated cities. The author presents us with comprehensive descriptions of the harsh realities of combat, in a country where tens of thousands of corpses still await burial. Political alliances are tenuous at best, and the blackmarket reigns supreme. Reich should be commended for taking the time to explore each layer of the political and social strata comprising a war-torn Europe, from the U.S. echelon in charge of rounding up deserted Nazi soldiers to the homeless German civilians trying to survive on the lawless streets.

In addition, each character is highly credible, filled with insecurities, and driven with the need to make a personal mark in a land that most feel insignificant. The Runner proves that no one is free from the sins of his own past, and that both our heroes and villains are serving a personal, but questionable, "greater good." The cameo appearances by General George Patton add a fuel of tension and milieu, as Reich's Patton can barely withhold his hatred for the enemy and seethes with potential violence. The author's attention to historical fact allows for an even greater understanding of the motivations of both the Allies and Axis Powers, and the liberties he takes benefit the overall storyline.

Seasoned with meticulous details, a heavy atmosphere of revenge, and top-notch political espionage, The Runner, which will make you sit up and take notice of the past, is a truly first-rate thriller.

--Tom Piccirilli

Detroit Free Press

[Reich] keeps the pages turning.

Wall Street Journal

A hefty thriller, authentic-seeming in historical fact and ... as irresistible as a big postwar Technicolor movie.

New York Daily News

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.

Chicago Sun Times

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.

Texas Monthly

...Reich gains bonus points for an objectivity often missing from post war plots. This is no red-white-and-blue rah-rah tale; not all bad guys are Nazis.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Shortly after the end of the second world war, Erich Seyss, a member of Hitler's SS who's also a Nazi Olympic runner, escapes an Allied POW camp to embark on one last strike for Germany. The protagonist, Devlin Judge, is an American lawyer who's in Europe to participate in the International War Tribunal. He takes up Seyss's trail after learning that the Nazi was responsible for many crimes against humanity, including the wholesale slaughter of an unarmed group of American soldiers, one of whom was Judge's brother. In a race against time, Reich leads readers on a wild and unpredictable ride as what seemed a typical game of cat and mouse churns into a tangle of paranoia, conspiracies and unexpected plot twists. Lang's crisp, energetic reading leads the listener through the despairing rubble of postwar Europe at a breakneck speed. Particularly interesting are his evocations of several bilingual characters, whose subtle vocal characteristics remain recognizable regardless of the accent they are using. Based on the Delacorte hardcover (Forecasts, Mar. 6). (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

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 Cahners Business Information.

From the Publisher

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)

JUN/JUL 01 - AudioFile

Set in the months after Germany’s surrender in WWII, this story is built around a war criminal whose skill is to impersonate any soldier of opposing nationalities. He’s on the run and hunted throughout occupied German territory. This landscape provides a cast of multinational characters with an ever-changing array of accents. George Guidall’s performance brings to life the aftermath of war and the strange bedfellows it produces. Guidall makes this tale, with its variety of dialects, shine through a plot thick in suspense and intrigue. S.B.P. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172075605
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	01/08/2008
Edition description:	Abridged

Read an Excerpt

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. Tohis 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.”

Copyright 2000 by Christopher Reich

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