Echo Burning: (Jack Reacher 5): A Jack Reacher Novel [Paperback]

There was a time when a US-set crime novel by a British writer (such as James Hadley Chase's No Orchids For Miss Blandish) could get away with a certain carelessness in local detail. Not any more. Since the Englishman Lee Child began writing his superbly authentic novels, few readers on either side of the Atlantic would accept anything other than the gritty authenticity of books such as Child's latest, Echo Burning. He prides himself on the plausibility of his settings and characters, and actually has a more striking sense of the American landscape that many native writers. He never allows the reader to forget just where his hero Jack Reacher is, what he's feeling, smelling, seeing. And Reacher has slowly but surely become one of the most fully rounded protagonists in thriller fiction. It's hardly surprising that the novels have been optioned for filming; what is surprising is the fact that it hasn't happened before.

Jack finds himself suffering the intense heat of a Texas summer, and (leaving behind a messy situation) hardly worries about the dangers of who will pick him up when he hitches a ride. But it's a beautiful young rich girl driving a Cadillac who gives Jack a lift. Carmen tells him she has a little girl who is being observed by unseen and sinister forces. And her brutal, abusive jailed husband is more than likely to kill her when he gets out. It's obviously highly inadvisable for Jack to travel to Carmen's remote ranch in Echo County and become involved in her problems, but (needless to say) he does just that. And he's soon encountering lies, lust and prejudice, with untrustworthy cops and lawyers absolutely no help. Jack finally realises that there is only one way to resolve this lethal situation.

As always with Child, the narrative rattles along with real élan, and the sultry characterisation keeps everything ruthlessly on track. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Cracking fast dialogue, an edgy ambivalent plot...this feels like Child's breakthrough book into the mega-sellers. He is that good'

'Plenty of twists and plenty of excitement...another real page-turner'

'A well-woven tale of dirt and duplicity with engaging characters...Child's character is a classic hero'

'Gritty stuff with a high body count and intricate plotting'

Jack Reacher is back!

Jack Reacher – six foot five and dangerous.Adrift in the hellish heat of Texas.Moving like a shark in the water.Looking for a lift through the vast empty landscape.

A Cadillac stops.A ride, but with a hitch.A pretty young woman, alone.Her husband’s in jail.When he comes out, he’s going to kill her.

Her family’s hostile, she can’t trust the cops, and lawyers won’t help.Reacher is her last option.Will this be the first time he says no - to a lady in distress?

Jack Reacher – six foot five and dangerous. Adrift in the hellish heat of Texas. Moving like a shark in the water. Looking for a lift through the vast empty landscape.

A Cadillac stops. A ride, but with a hitch. A pretty young woman, alone. Her husband’s in jail. When he comes out, he’s going to kill her.

Her family’s hostile, she can’t trust the cops, and lawyers won’t help. Reacher is her last option. Will this be the first time he says no – to a lady in distress?

LEE CHILD is British, but after he was made redundant from his job in television, he moved with his family from Cumbria to the United States to start a new career as a writer of American thrillers. He now divides his time between France and New York. All his novels feature the maverick Jack Reacher, and all have been international bestsellers.

There were three watchers, two men and a boy. They were using telescopes, not field glasses. It was a question of distance. They were almost a mile from their target area, because of the terrain. There was no closer cover. It was low, undulating country, burned khaki by the sun, grass and rock and sandy soil alike. The nearest safe concealment was the broad dip they were in, a bone-dry gulch scraped out a million years ago by a different climate, when there had been rain and ferns and rushing rivers.
The men lay prone in the dust with the early heat on their backs, their telescopes at their eyes. The boy scuttled around on his knees, fetching water from the cooler, watching for waking rattlesnakes, logging comments in a notebook. They had arrived before first light in a dusty pick-up truck, the long way round, across the empty land from the west. They had thrown a dirty tarpaulin over the truck and pegged it down with rocks. They had eased forward to the rim of the dip and settled in, raising their telescopes as the low morning sun dawned to the east behind the red house almost a mile away. This was Friday, their fifth consecutive morning, and they were low on conversation.
'Time?' one of the men asked. His voice was nasal, the effect of keeping one eye open and the other eye shut.
The boy checked his watch.
'Six fifty,' he answered.
'Any moment now,' the man with the telescope said.
The boy opened his book and prepared to make the same notes he had made four times before.
'Kitchen light on,' the man said.
The boy wrote it down. Six fifty, kitchen light on. The kitchen faced them, looking west away from the morning sun, so it stayed dark even after dawn.
'On her own?' the boy asked.
'Same as always,' the second man said, squinting.
Maid prepares breakfast, the boy wrote. Target still in bed. The sun rose, inch by inch. It jacked itself higher into the sky and pulled the shadows shorter and shorter. The red house had a tall chimney coming out of the kitchen wing like the finger on a sundial. The shadow it made swung and shortened and the heat on the watchers' shoulders built higher. Seven o'clock in the morning, and it was already hot. By eight, it would be burning. By nine, it would be fearsome. And they were there all day, until dark, when they could slip away unseen.
'Bedroom drapes opening,' the second man said. 'She's up and about.'
The boy wrote it down. Seven oh-four, bedroom drapes open.
'Now listen,' the first man said.
They heard the well pump kick in, very faintly from almost a mile away. A quiet mechanical click, and then a steady low drone.
'She's showering,' the man said.
The boy wrote it down. Seven oh-six, target starts to shower.
The men rested their eyes. Nothing was going to happen while she was in the shower. How could it? They lowered their telescopes and blinked against the brassy sun in their eyes. The well pump clicked off after six minutes. The silence sounded louder than the faint noise had. The boy wrote: seven twelve, target out of shower. The men raised their telescopes again.
'She's dressing, I guess,' the first man said.
The boy giggled. 'Can you see her naked?'
The second man was triangulated twenty feet to the south. He had the better view of the back of the house, where her bedroom window was.
'You're disgusting,' he said. 'You know that?'
The boy wrote: seven fifteen, probably dressing. Then: Seven twenty, probably downstairs, probably eating breakfast.
'She'll go back up, clean her teeth,' he said.
The man on the left shifted on his elbows.
'For sure,' he said. 'Prissy little thing like that.'
'She's closing her drapes again,' the man on the right said.
It was standard practice in the west of Texas, in the summer, especially if your bedroom faced south, like this one did. Unless you wanted to sleep the next night in a room hotter than a pizza oven.
'Stand by,' the man said. 'A buck gets ten she goes out to the barn now.'
It was a wager that nobody took, because so far four times out of four she had done exactly that, and watchers are paid to notice patterns.
'Kitchen door's open.'
The boy wrote: seven twenty-seven, kitchen door opens.
'Here she comes.'
She came out, dressed in a blue gingham dress which reached to her knees and left her shoulders bare. Her hair was tied back behind her head. It was still damp from the shower.
'What do you call that sort of a dress?' the boy asked.
'Halter,' the man on the left said.
Seven twenty-eight, comes out, blue halter dress, goes to barn, the boy wrote.
She walked across the yard, short hesitant steps against the uneven ruts in the baked earth, maybe seventy yards. She heaved the barn door open and disappeared in the gloom inside.
The boy wrote: seven twenty-nine, target in barn.
'How hot is it?' the man on the left asked.
'Maybe a hundred degrees,' the boy said.
'There'll be a storm soon. Heat like this, there has to be.'

'Here comes her ride,' the man on the right said.
Miles to the south, there was a dust cloud on the road. A vehicle, making slow and steady progress north.
'She's coming back,' the man on the right said.