The Runner

by Christopher Reich

Delacorte Press, 440 pp., $26.95

Christopher Reich has followed up his New York Times bestselling debut Numbered Account with The Runner, a slick cat-und-maus thriller set against the battle-torn cities of post-WWII Germany. It’s a tautly written effort, though it never generates the jaw-clenching tension that the best of the genre produces.

July 1945. World War II has ended. The Allies are disbanding the Third Reich’s war machine and preparing to bring accused war criminals before the International Military Tribunal. Enter U.S. civilian attorney Devlin Judge, who has been given temporary military rank and assigned to interrogate Field Marshall Hermann Goering. There’s your white hat. Enter Major Erich Seyss (Nazi SS), who has escaped from a prisoner of war camp where he was interned for, among other atrocities, ordering his field patrol to kill 113 unarmed Americans in cold blood. There’s your black hat. Add Ingrid Bach (this one’s complicated), daughter of a German industrialist and formerly affianced to Major Seyss, who broke it off when Jewish ancestors turned up in her lineage. There’s your love interest. And, finally, Father Francis Xavier Judge, Devlin’s saintly Jesuit brother who was among the Americans slaughtered — you guessed it — at the hand of Major Seyss. There’s your motive for revenge (as in, “You dirty rat, you killed my brother”).

And so it goes in The Runner. Devlin Judge pursues his personal vendetta against Seyss — going AWOL in the process. He is mightily sidetracked when his investigative encounters with Fraulein Bach generate much frisson. There is a nice ironic twist when Judge and Seyss are forced to, in effect, switch flags to keep from blowing their covers. General George Patton’s cameos are entertaining and enlightening for those too young to recall how scary a renegade can be when he’s commanding a continent full of soldiers.

Austinite Reich has given us good and evil in black and white. There’s a sense of fettered energy in the book, as though the author could never quite find the key to turn the story loose and let it really run. Maybe there’s just a certain inevitable weariness (perhaps déjô vu) that accompanies the kazillionth Nazi manhunt intrigue. Though Nazis are the ultimate fail-safe villain, it’s a real trick to wring yet another original plot angle out of the great bêtes noire of the Last Great War.

This article appears in May 19 • 2000.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

SUPPORT US