Rating: 
Summary: Clint, Bruce, and Mel are comparative sissies.
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: No, No, No
Review: Wish I had not bothered to read all of it! I was bored when I picked it up and bored when I put it down. The author's first 3 Jack Reacher books were much, much better!
Rating:
Summary: Yuck.
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Escapist fun
Review: I respectfully suggest that Mr. Fort, below, is reading too much into this mystery. I don't like "PC" books, either, but I didn't take this book as one. Obviously you know Texas better than I do. I just didn't see the story as a slam against Texas, although I see how you might take it that way, if you're so inclined (I'll grant that the Balzac quote did seem out of character). I thought the lawyer's revelation was more funny than PC - expected a buildup to a romantic scene, then, oops, well, that't not going to happen.
I normally don't like poor-little-woman-married-to-big-mean-guy stories, but I liked this one. It didn't fall into the usual Lifetime-TV cliches, and Reacher is an interesting, larger-than-life character. I would like to read another book about him.
Rating: 
Summary: TO MUCH IS UNBELIEVEABLE!!!!!
Review: I have read all the Reacher books. I relly liked this one until it came to the shoot out on the mesa and then the hunt for the child. It all was so unbelieveable. Reacher is picked up by Carmen Greer, who says he husband, Sloop Greer, beat her, broke bones and abused her. Sloop has been in prison but is getting out in 48 hours. She wants someone to kill him when he gets out. Reacher will not do it but does agree to go to her house to be with her when Sloop comes home. There is much action, many family secrets, several get killed, but through it all Jack Raacher does prevail. The book will hold your attention. Except for several of the parts you can't believe it is pretty good. Lee Child could and has done better.
Rating:
Summary: Hopelessly PC
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Echo Burning
Review: As a "big" fan of the Jack Reacher series I was disapointed in this book. It was weak and very boring. Too many damn details of stuff I could care less about. I don't know how I got through it. His other books are gripping right from the start. By the time this got interesting I lost interest.
Rating:
Summary: Predictable!
Review: Honestly, Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" is quite a likable person. Echo Burning is the first book I've read so far from that author. I can say that it was big fun to read it book and almost unputdownable, a must-read, but on the other hand if you seek for a good mystery, this book would probably disappoint you tremendously. The end was really unconvincing, to my opinion, just guessing and thinking, Jack Reacher should be a fortune teller or a clairvoyant, but I like his sense of humor :-)
I am not sure where to put it, probably in the twilight-zone of reviews ;)
Rating:
Summary: A very pretentious and unconvincing story
Review: I have to drop this book after one hundred pages. The writing is too pretentious and going nowhere like standing in the mid of nowhere of Texas. Rich guy from Texas went to UCLA, married a Chicano classmate and then came back to his Texas hometown and, well, totally changed into another person and, well, started beating his wife anytime he liked. Give me a break. The whole premises seem too farfetched and unbelievable. The writer also tried maybe hard to make his roaming guy too cool into falsehood. When I tried to read along, I felt myself becoming very alienated and had to drop it then. I've read every one of this writer's books but this one made me finally decide to drop him like an echo burning behind my memory.
Rating:
Summary: Likable
Review: Good solid mystery with a tough guy, a cute kid, a troubled woman and a couple of other typical type characters but what the heck - I liked it.
|
