Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reacher at his best !!, 9 Aug 2008
This is the 6th book of Lee Child's that I have read - and I have yet to be disappointed. He writes well, weaves a good, solid story with rich characters and environments. Fortunately, he avoids the pitfalls of other adventure novelists who are so caught up in their desire to show their knowledge - they tack on an extra 100 pages of 'dressing' that really doesn't impact the story. Also - while there's plenty of action - it's realistic, not fantastic. While Jack Reacher may be slightly larger than life - he's also human, broodingly so at times - but intelligent.
In this story - Jack is again cruising the country when he is brought into a conflict in Texas with a woman, an unusual family and a town that feels very real and familiar. While he initially tries to avoid being brought into the woman's drama - his curiosity and empathy outweigh his caution - and he is dragged into a serpentine situation, watching over a family, a little girl and dealing with very protective 'friends'. Suspected wife abuse, an investigative reporter and the politics of Texas are all brought in - mixed with a little intrigue of a third party who takes an interest in Jack and his activities.
I won't detail any more than that - as I encourage the reader to dig in. Like all of his books I've read - this one starts quickly, moves along steadily and keeps you interested from the beginning to the end - throwing a few surprises in along the way, it is difficult to find great reads in this genre but when Child is on form then they are brill, try the `Soft Target` novels by Conrad Jones, excellent reading..back to the review . Pick this one up - you won't regret it!
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clint, Bruce and Mel are comparative sissies, 10 Aug 2006
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.
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14 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
LEE CHILD ONCE AGAIN PROVES WHAT A TALENTED WRITER HE IS!!!, 29 Jul 2001
By A Customer
Last year, when I read RUNNING BLIND, I gave it a somewhat scathing review, stating that Lee Child hadn't produce a really exciting book since THE KILLING FLOOR, promising myself that I'll never buy another "Jack Reacher" novel in hardback for as long as I lived. As far as I was concerned, Mr. Child had three strikes against him and had struck out with me as a fan. Well, I broke the promise to myself with the publication of ECHO BURNING, and I'm glad I did. This novel turned out to be a winner in every sense of the word and represents the sheer craftsmanship that Lee Child is capable of bringing to his work. In his newest book, Jack Reacher once again returns and finds himself caught up in a game of lies, abuse and murder. While hitchhiking out of Lubbock, Texas in an attempt to escape the wrath of the law, he's picked up by Carmen Greer, a beautiful, married Latino woman who's driving a luxurious white Cadillac. Mrs. Greer is looking for someone to kill her abusive husband, Sloop, who's due to get out of prison, and she thinks that Reacher would be the perfect person to take care of her little problem. Since Reacher doesn't consider himself to be a cold-blooded killer, he politely refuses her kind offer. He does, however, agree to go back to the ranch where she and her daughter, Ellie, live with Sloop's family and to act as a protector for her. This leads to our hero finding himself in the middle of a really large domestic dispute. Except for Carmen and Ellie, nobody in the Greer family likes having his presence at the ranch, and they attempt to do everything within their power to force him to leave. When Sloop gets out of jail and returns home, only to be murdered on the night of his arrival, it looks as though Carmen decided to take matters into her own hands. No one believes that she's innocent, except for Jack Reacher. As he attempts to hire a lawyer to represent Carmen, while at the same time trying to find out who the real killer is, he becomes the focus point of a three-person "hit" team and must stay alive long enough to get to the truth. ECHO BURNING is a taut, suspenseful thriller that displays the brilliant writing that Lee Child is capable of penning. He captures the heat and isolation of the Texas landscape perfectly, while giving us characters filled with either an outright meanness or a hidden evil. Though Reacher is able to read people, judging how good or bad they might be, he may have just met his match with the Greer family. There are so many lies and half-truths being told by, and about, the family that our main character won't know whom to believe, and neither will the reader. Is everything that Carmen Greer told Reacher a lie so that her husband could be murdered, or is the Greer family really a nest of vipers, ready to kill to protect its own? In this novel, Mr. Child touches the inner core of what evil really is and how it hides behind the masks of ordinary people. Jack Reacher, however, shines at his best as he decides to take on a whole town, if necessary, to do what he feels is right, meeting violence with violence, and handing out death to those who want a piece of him. ECHO BURNING is one tough novel that gives us a deeper look at the character of Jack Reacher and the essence of humanity in him that reaches out to help those who are being preyed upon. This is definitely the kind of person you want covering your back when the bad guys are closing in. For those of you who loved THE KILLING FLOOR, Mr. Child has written another book that equals, if not surpasses, the quality of his first novel. It's one I'm proud to highly recommend!
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