When Army Chief Warrant Officer Anthony Tobias taps Pfc Smith to drive him to the scene of a murder, it is the start of a singular collaboration. Propelled by the inexplicable death of an officer's young wife, their adventure leads them down the cobblestone lanes of medieval Nurnberg and across the rolling hills of Bavaria, through the seamy underside of Europe's sex industry and against the dress-right mentality of an American combat battalion, and at last into the secret heart of violence and despair. It is an experience for Smith that ranges from the intellectual to the sublime and from...