false<![CDATA[The Runner]]>http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178333945m/786178.jpg78617810Set against the backdrop of post-World War II Germany, <I>The Runner</I> 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."<p> <I>The Runner</I> lacks the crackling tension of <I>Numbered Account</I>, 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.<p> <I>The Runner</I> 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." <I>--Kelly Flynn</I> 31323152000The Runnertotal:112|5:12|4:45|3:39|2:14|1:2|1123871581440falsefalseThu Mar 19 00:00:00 -0700 2009Thu Mar 26 14:33:59 -0700 2009Thu Mar 26 14:42:44 -0700 2009
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30falsefalseTue Aug 11 00:00:00 -0700 2009Mon Sep 14 20:45:30 -0700 2009Mon Sep 14 20:45:30 -0700 200930falsefalseSun Oct 05 00:00:00 -0700 2008Fri Sep 26 16:52:54 -0700 2008Sun Oct 05 07:33:14 -0700 2008
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40falsefalseWed Feb 18 18:13:20 -0800 2009Wed Feb 18 18:18:14 -0800 2009
Based on history with a great fictional plot.]]>
40falsefalseThu Sep 17 13:37:48 -0700 2009Thu Sep 17 13:37:48 -0700 200950falsefalseTue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008Mon Aug 17 16:50:42 -0700 2009Mon Aug 17 16:51:35 -0700 200930falsefalseTue Aug 18 00:00:00 -0700 2009Tue Aug 18 18:11:10 -0700 2009Tue Aug 18 18:12:07 -0700 200930falsefalseFri Nov 06 00:00:00 -0800 2009Tue Oct 20 06:52:49 -0700 2009Fri Nov 06 07:19:42 -0800 200940falsefalseSun Jul 26 16:32:32 -0700 2009Sun Jul 26 16:32:32 -0700 200920falsefalseSat Aug 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009Mon Jul 13 14:54:13 -0700 2009Sun Aug 16 00:56:06 -0700 2009 It also annoyed me that the map in the flyleaf didn't have half the locations the characters traveled thru making the map a tease rather than a useful help ...more...]]>
40falsefalseThu Aug 14 10:25:29 -0700 2008Mon Aug 18 09:30:01 -0700 2008 All you need to do is throw in an alernate history and you've got me hook, line and sinker.]]>
30falsefalseFri Mar 28 00:00:00 -0700 2008Sun Apr 06 09:35:16 -0700 2008Sun Apr 06 09:49:35 -0700 200830falsefalseSat May 03 12:28:55 -0700 2008Sat May 03 12:28:55 -0700 200830falsefalseMon May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2000Wed Feb 06 14:31:11 -0800 2008Wed Feb 06 14:31:38 -0800 200800falsefalseThu Nov 19 10:44:56 -0800 2009Thu Nov 19 10:44:56 -0800 200900falsefalseTue Nov 10 20:21:55 -0800 2009Tue Nov 10 20:21:59 -0800 200950falsefalseTue Nov 10 10:43:26 -0800 2009Tue Nov 10 10:43:26 -0800 200900falsefalseWed Nov 04 09:33:34 -0800 2009Wed Nov 04 09:33:34 -0800 200900falsefalseSat Oct 31 07:56:42 -0700 2009Sat Oct 31 07:56:42 -0700 200900falsefalseThu Oct 22 20:44:16 -0700 2009Thu Oct 22 20:44:16 -0700 2009
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