Lee Child’s Echo Burning (Reacher #5), Review: Thrilling intensity
Lee Child’s Echo Burning is born from a simple storyline that builds in intensity as he peels back the mystery layer by layer. Read our full review.
Echo Burning (A Jack Reacher Thriller) Synopsis
Hitching rides is an unreliable mode of transport. In temperatures of over a hundred degrees, you’re lucky if a driver will open the door of his air-conditioned car long enough to let you slide in. That’s Jack Reacher’s conclusion. He’s adrift in the fearsome heat of a Texas summer, and he needs to keep moving through the wide-open vastness, like a shark in the water. The last thing he’s worried about is exactly who picks him up.
He never expected it to be somebody like Carmen. She’s alone, driving a Cadillac. She’s beautiful, young and rich. She has a little girl who is being watched by unseen observers. And a husband who is in jail. Who will beat her senseless when he comes out. If he doesn’t kill her first.
Reacher is no stranger to trouble. And at Carmen’s remote ranch in Echo County there is plenty of it: lies and prejudice, hatred and murder. Reacher can never resist a lady in distress. Her family is hostile. The cops can’t be trusted. The lawyers won’t help. If Reacher can’t set things straight, who can?
Genre: Audio, Action-Adventure, Drama, Thriller
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BOOK REVIEW
A friend of mine has been recommending I read a Lee Child Jack Reacher thriller for years and I finally have. I can now see what all the fuss is about. Echo Burning, the fifth instalment in the Jack Reacher series, is not literature by any means but it an easy to digest and compelling thriller.
Protagonist Jack Reacher is the perfect mix of brains and brawn, of heart and hero.
“Who are you looking at?” he said. It was said low and aggressively but Reacher ignored it. “Who are you looking at?” the guy said again.
Reacher’s experience was, they say it once, maybe nothing’s gonna happen. If they say it twice, then trouble’s on the way. Fundamental problem is they take a lack of response as evidence that you’re worried, that they’re winning, but then they won’t let you answer anyway.
Simple storyline with intensity
While on the face of it a simple storyline, Lee Child builds intensity by peeling back the mystery of Echo Burning layer by layer.
I was pleasantly blind-sided on more than one occasion — Child is certainly not afraid to kill off characters. The relationship between Reacher and Carmen’s daughter adds real heart also.
Audiobook narration
The narration of the Echo Burning audiobook by Jeff Harding was clear, well-paced and atmospheric.
I look forward to another outing with Jack Reacher (and narrator Jeff Harding) in the future, and luckily for me there are plenty more adventures to share with Jack Reacher, with Lee Child now up to the 16th book in the series!
A question for the die-hard Lee Child fans out there – what do you think of Tom Cruise being cast as Jack Reacher in the movie currently being filmed, One Shot?
I know Cruise normally equates to box office earnings, but he does not fit the picture of Jack Reacher in my head.
BOOK RATING: The Story 4 /5 ; The Writing 4 / 5
Get your copy of Echo Burning from:
About the Author, Lee Child
The British thriller writer Jim Grant publishes under his pen name Lee Child. He is best known for his very successful Jack Reacher Thriller Series.
– Check out Lee Child (and Jack Reacher’s) official website.
Narrator Information: Jeff Harding is an American actor who has narrated many action titles such as The Da Vinci Code and The Bourne Identity. See Harding’s movie credits at IMDb.
