Book review
One of the best Reacher novels I’ve read so far. Reacher is sucked in by a damsel in distress–an Hispanic woman who has been beaten by her husband and sneered at by the dominant white community for years but who refuses to run away making her daughter and herself ‘illegals.’ She’s hoping Reacher can help her with a different solution before her husband gets out of jail for tax evasion and the beatings begin again. Ellie, the six-and-a-half year old daughter, is a wonderful, appealing character. Child does a good job keeping me guessing on this one. It was like the story started out one way and then I had to flip my thinking to another story, plus there was a side detail running parallel to the two stories that I knew had to fit in somewhere but I was guessing and guessing how it did. There was perhaps more character development and exploration of misjustice and prejudice in this novel than macho action, violent fights, and stellar criminal detection, but there was enough to make it a Reacher type novel.
We are treated to a rationale for Reacher’s morality, which usually shows up in the Child books. The ‘nothing wrong with killing cockroaches’ theme, which is Reacher’s own explanation of his actions. But Reacher also identifies with two descriptions of Pecos killer, Robert Clay Allison (1840-1887): ‘He never killed a man that did not need killing’ and ‘Certain it is that many of his stern deeds were for the right as he understood that right to be.’
In Child’s novels, I’ve always appreciated how the title adds a level of interest to the story. In this case, Echo Burning, the title of this novel, was harder to tie to the story line. Echo is the name of a town in Texas near the border where prejudice still runs high against ‘beaners,’ a derogatory name for Hispanics. The injustices against the Hispanic community and the inhumane treatment of illegals is woven well into the story–Child wasn’t really on a soapbox. Our hero, Reacher, of course, is not prejudiced against Hispanics. One nice quote from Honore de Balzac was shared in the novel, illustrating the difficulties of getting justice in the town : ‘Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.’ Given this racial conflict, Echo Burning reminded me of Mississippi Burning and the civil rights conflicts of the South from the sixties. Ah, the title was very apt after all.
- Goodreads rating – 4.03
- SUMMARY – Dlora