Lee Child's Echo Burning - Review

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Jack Reacher returns in another gripping thriller, the lawless drifter finding himself caught in a tangled web of prejudice, corruption and violence.
Under the heat of the Texas sun, a boy and two men watch a house, tracking and recording the movements of its occupants. Meanwhile, a team of professional assassins - a woman and two men – are beginning a mission. Alone and adrift, Jack Reacher chooses to avoid a confrontation with an angry Texas cop with whom he had an altercation in a bar the previous evening. Thumbing for a lift, he is surprised when a young woman pulls over. But Carmen Greer has an ulterior motive and Reacher is exactly the sort of person she’s been looking for. Her abusive husband is due to be released from prison. Terrified at the prospect of his release and desperate for a new life with their young daughter, she has a proposal – she wants Reacher to kill her husband.
But Reacher is not a cold-blooded assassin. Yet he is sympathetic to her plight and agrees to do what he can to help, claiming to her husband’s family that he is simply looking for work on the ranch. Only he soon realises that his agreement to warn off an abusive bully only scratches the surface of what lies rotten and decaying under the intense heat and the situation is about to become far more complicated.
Fast-paced and action-packed with a character-driven heart, ‘Echo Burning’ is a fantastic entry in the Reacher series, which goes from strength to strength. I particularly liked the relationship Reacher developed with Carmen’s young daughter, Ellie; while the determined and hard-working young lawyer, Alice, is a refreshing female character in a genre that is often male-dominated. In fact, the whole concept of ‘Echo Burning’ – exploring spousal abuse and racial prejudice, and featuring several strong female characters – makes the novel stand out from the crowd.
Aside from references to Reacher’s girlfriend Jodie (who featured in the two previous novels, ‘Tripwire’ and ‘The Visitor’), this is very much a standalone entry in the series and can easily be read independently or out-of-sequence. Jack Reacher is such a brilliant character to go on a journey with – a tough loner driven by a strong moral code, never afraid to question authority and the perceived ‘normal’ in the pursuit of justice. Reacher’s situation allows for different formulas to be explored in each novel – ‘Echo Burning’ is part action thriller, part domestic thriller, with a touch of social legal drama.
Building to a storming finale, ‘Echo Burning’ delivers another untangled mystery, merciless retribution and crumbling of injustice, with Reacher walking out into the heat once again adrift, doubtless on his way to get caught up in his next adventure.
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Published on September 01, 2020 04:43
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Tags:
action-thriller, domestic-thriller, jack-reacher, lee-child, legal-thriller
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