Customer Reviews

Echo Burning (Jack Reacher, No. 5)

5 star:		(67)
4 star:		(47)
3 star:		(33)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Its hard to beat Jack Reacher books when they are on form.Each generation, I suppose, has its favorite fictional Tough Guys. For my parents, it may have been Bogart and The Duke. For me, they've been Clint, Bruce, and Mel on the Big Screen, and the literary British spy Quiller. However, in the past couple of years, Jack Reacher has arrived on the killing fields. And he's perhaps tougher, certainly smarter, than any who've gone before.
A former Army major assigned to the Military Police, Jack has been aimlessly roaming the United States through several novels, and attracting big trouble in each one. In ECHO BURNING, he's hitchhiked into sunburnt West Texas where he's given a ride by Carmen Greer, who's cruising the highways on the lookout for a Tough Guy. Carmen lives with her young daughter, Ellie, on an arid ranch with her hateful brother-in-law and mother-in-law while her husband, Sloop, serves time in a federal pen for tax evasion. According to the story Carmen spins, her spouse had been viciously beating her for years. Since Sloop is due to be released in forty-eight hours, Carmen expects the beatings to begin anew, especially since she was the one that ratted on Sloop to the IRS. Will Reacher kill him for her? No? Well, will he at least teach her how to shoot the dainty pistol she's purchased? (In the meantime, what's with that team of three professional assassins circling the ranch unbeknownst to all? Jack may discover his hands full.)

All those other Tough Guys I mentioned are smart, but not so much that they don't sporadically get beaten up and kicked silly by the Bad Guys. But not Reacher - nobody gets the drop on him. When the reader sees a violent confrontation looming, he almost feels sorry for the villains for the World of Hurt in which they'll soon find themselves. By his own admission, Jack's a hard man who likes cockroaches better than the men (and women) he's sometimes forced to exterminate.

Reacher is endlessly fascinating. Having gone from one Army post to another, first as an Army brat and then on his own as an MP officer, he's never known a permanent home. So, now he chooses to live as a near-vagrant, shunning commitment to material things and the occasional interesting woman. He travels only with testosterone and a toothbrush, buying cheap clothes to wear and discard as he goes. He's educated, intelligent and gentlemanly, but excruciatingly asocial (as opposed to antisocial, which he's not) and heroically ignorant about how a "normal" life - wife, house, mortgage, kids, dog, 9 to 5, and Lexus - is lived. This is a man whom all you single ladies out there would love the chance to improve. (Don't cave, Jack! Be a role model for the rest of us New Age men pining to be free!)

Hey, all you other Tough Guys of lore and legend, move aside and make room for a Real Man.

This is a classic Reacher novel, fun and well written. I read it on holiday and thoroughly enjoyed it. I also read two of the Soft Target novels by Conrad Jones, great stories and shocking thrillers, a must for Reacher fans I couldnt put them. Try both they are great reading.

book so far in Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" series.

Jack's a loner, and it is fitting that he's back on the road again after trying unsuccessfully to settle down. He's in hot, dry, west Texas (and Child really makes you feel as though you are there - you're thirsty throughout the story!) where he's enlisted himself to help an abused (?) wife, Carmen Greer, and her daughter, Ellie. Greer's tale is fraught with lies, and, if I were Jack, I would have given up on her. She's not able to escape her husband, Sloop, and his secretive pack of friends that
have a past that leads to bloodshed.

The pace bogs down from time to time, and it is difficult to root for Carmen. The ending is a lot more transparent than anything Child has given us previously. Worst of all, Child gets bogged down in his own descriptiveness, a problem encountered in his earlier works, where it was more forgiveable and did less to hurt his characterization and his pace.

Not giving up on Jack, because he is the most refreshing hero of the past few years, but one more average work by Lee Child will send me scurrying for some new authors!

Lee Child may be one of the most inconsistent writers in popular fiction. Some of his books are very good, some are readable but not outstanding, and some, like Echo Burning, are just plain awful.

The book starts out with one of the most tired, worn-out cliches in the mystery genre; a lovely wife in distress asks hero Jack Reacher to help her out by killing her abusive husband. Savvy readers are then thinking, "Aha! There must be more to the story than this! Some unusual twist or surprise sub-plot." The answer? Nope. There's not.

The book takes place in the Texas desert and if you chopped out every sentence describing how hot it is, the book would be about 20 pages long. Those remaining 20 pages would be descriptions of how long it takes to drive from one place to another out there in all that emptiness, which is what Reacher spends most of his time doing since the places he needs to go are so far apart.

This book took me forever to finish because I couldn't get through more than 5 pages in one sitting without falling asleep. Lee Child may have written some exciting, fast-paced books in his career, but this is definitely not one of them.

Jack Reacher travels light. His luggage is a toothbrush. He didn't know when he punched a man out that the man was an off-duty police officer, but he can easily slip out a windown. Thumbing a ride puts him in a car with a woman wanting to hire some muscle, and he ends up on an isolated ranch in Texas (dry, hot Texas). The woman is having trouble with an abusive husband, and he is due to be released from prison.

But there are plots within plots, people watching the ranch from a distance, and some hired killers have a contract. It takes a while for the plots to come together to determine who is doing what to whom. Some people are telling lies, and Reacher has to decide who to believe. There are a couple of twists.

Overall, I thought that this was about an average Jack Reacher novel. It did not hold my attention like some of the others, but it is an OK read. If you have not read novels in the series, this is a variation of the Clint Eastwood Man-with-no-name motion pictures, i.e., a man shows up in town, cleans up a bad situation, and slips away again. Reacher does not carry a gun, but will use one if pressed. He is a former major in the military police, and now he is a drifter who carries no ID and pays in cash.

I read this awhile back and was surprised to see Amazon still pushing it. Lee Child is a good author, but his books have fallen out of favor with me in that I catagorize them as "formula books." They are all basically the same, in different locales etc. I feel the same about James Patterson, yet people seem to love his books.

Child started out so well, but now has fallen into a predictable pattern. His character will get into trouble within the first hour or less after he arrives in a town. I can appreciate he wants to travel light, but this business of rinsing out his clothes and after another wearing, buying new and tossing the old. I feel sure he must have a certain 'air' about him. As others have pointed out. he didn't research Texas very well at all and the errors are numerous and, frankly, bothersome.

Reacher seems to be basically an empty shell, wandering about and taking what comes along. A drifter. I can't care about him anymore and that is sad, because he was so effective when he intercepted the bad guy after the pretty lady coming out of the cleaning store ........... way back in the early novel. Remember how good that was? And how lame the current efforts are.

Perhaps a new character would inspire Mr. Child. He is a talented author.

Lee Child is a wonderful writer, but frequently he tries too hard to create the "perfect character" or the "perfect twist" to his plots. "ECHO BURNING" is a good example of a book that over-reaches itself. The characters are too heavily drawn, the plot is convoluted, and the details just don't quite ring true. Jack Reacher is a good, solid character, but he can't possibly be the "super-hero" that he is written as. Lee Child's grasp of the military as a way of life and as a career leaves something to be desired. There are gaps and false notes from time to time. The plot is way too far-fetched to be believable but it does hold the reader's interest.

Child's treatment of the story and the characters in "ECHO BURNING" makes for a good read and I can honestly say that I enjoyed this book and will defitely read the next one.

This book has it all for the PC fan: redneck "gringas" that hunt mexican "wetbacks" like dogs; a beautiful lesbian lawyer who helps the oppressed poor - she's from New York City of course, and works for free to "give back"; the latino heroine whose family owns 1000 acres in Napa Valley but is tragically married to a West Texas rancher/oil man who beats her constantly; his matriarchal mother who still wears jeans and fringed blouses fit for a 20 year old and lacquers her hair into a beehive; poor Mexican immigrants living as row croppers that quote Balzac; gum popping white waitresses who won't talk to their "beaner" mexican customers; and of course a hero who was mysteriously discharged from the Army after being somehow psychologically ruined by the military. The local sheriff is a fat drunken anglo, but law enforcement is saved by the sharp looking, well built hispanic ranger. And all this is just the tip of the sterotypical iceberg. After a few chapters the read is funny just to see what kind of a world view is held by this New York City writer. Seriously flawed book by someone who obviously hasn't researched his material.

It's amazing that the author goes out of his way to make it plain that all Jack Reacher carries with him is a toothbrush in his pocket. He has no change of clothes (including underwear or t-shirts). So, with no change of clothing, an incredibly high Texas temperature (noted excessivly by the author), and no deoderant, this must be one EXTREMELY SMELLY, GREASY, DIRTY, DISGUSTING man. Funny how the author doesn't have any character mention this... funny how this avoids being part of the story at all! Also, that two reasonable adults don't agree that Carmen (a) facing her parents (who are rich and have means and raiser her "like a princess"), or (b) simply staying in Texas (because she can't, she just can't bring herself to do that!), or (c) running with her daughter and seeking battered shelter (because she WON'T be a fugutive, she WON'T give up her "legal" status!), are better options than (d) conspiring to commit murder! THAT IS UTTERLY RIICULOUS! Either she's playing Reacher and PLEASE LORD tell me why this character goes from being HIGHLY intelligent to being HIGHLY S-T-U-P-I-D on so regular a basis... or... this is all true and so poorly plotted as to being "throw that darn book against the wall" stupid!!! URRRGGHHHHH!!!! I can't believe I paid cash for this book... I've been cheated.

Lee Child started out with some pretty fine novels in his series featuring the ex-military cop, now drifter Jack Reacher. Reacher seems to have a penchant for landing in some rather outlandish and bizarre situations. Unfortunately, Child lost his touch in this one. ECHO BURNING is a slow, drawn out, and rather boring novel. While RUNNING BLIND, his last novel, was a terribly unbelievable and contrived plot - at least there was plenty of swift, moving action that kept the pages turning. Here we get long, unnecessarily detailed descriptions of Reacher sleeping, Reacher driving in a car, the melodrama of a six year old trying to figure out how to open a locked door. This reader kept saying "let's get on with it already!!"

This was a rather slow and disappointing story.

I've read all of Lee Child's books now and Echo Burning was quite a book! For me, it started slowly and I had to really believe that something good was coming down the pike. While Carmen and Reacher were driving along in the car was very boring to me but as I stayed with it. Then when Reacher was taken into a bar by the ranch hands I began to sit up straight and pay attention. Reacher is over the top and such fun to read! The fight in the desert is wild. The description of the Texas heat is right on and you get thirsty just reading about it. Toward the end, it dragged on and out a bit but I certainly will read the next book about Jack Reacher as soon as it comes out. Worth my time!