"ECHO BURNING" by Lee Child (A)

Heaven only knows where Lee Child came up with the rather abstruse title for this book. It does capture my interest and curiosity, but certainly not more than the subtitle, "A Jack Reacher Novel," which has now become a Lee Child brand name in the crime mystery genre. The opaqueness of the title, fortunately, is not carried forward into the plot, which turns out to be another very fine story starring his tall and laconic drifter, Jack Reacher.

I remember viewing a segment on "CBS Sunday Morning" a while back that analyzed the difficulty of selecting a catchy title along with an unusual design for the book cover that will create the desire for an impulse purchase. A publisher will often pitch numerous ideas to the author since the title and cover both have to come together to tell a story for a casual glance that might only last a few seconds. There's only one chance to do it right, which must be very challenging.

Needless to say, the process of becoming a literary success is a lot easier if the writer is good at what he does and his novels become a brand that breeds customer loyalty. Long time fans will hungrily wait for the next version to come out, while newer fans to the series will often go back to read the author's earlier novels to find out how and where it all started. New book sales tend to build upon the success of earlier novels. This is no more or any less than giving the customers what they want. It's also good business and doubtless a literary direction that would be highly encouraged by any publisher with an eye on the bottom line.

It is our great pleasure that Lee Child is very, very good at what he does, for his Jack Reacher novels have the capability of becoming classics of the genre. I am immediately interested when I see a subtitle proclaiming that this book is "A Jack Reacher Novel." Here is a literary brand that promises much and delivers.

This is the fifth outing in the Jack Reacher series and everything is in place with a crack story that is beautifully told from numerous angles. Child is better than most all other authors in the way that he links the disparate events and characters together well before they meet. Rather than being confusing, Child writes with clarity in such a manner that it is easy to understand where the characters fit in. There is also a strong sense of purpose to their activities that makes the story both fascinating and challenging.

I will add here that Jack Reacher is unlike any of the other crime mystery heroes that I have recently read. He is a loner without a home or a family, and Reacher likes it that way because it keeps things simple.

He has no grounding other than his past life spent traveling around the world as a military brat followed by a long career in the military, all ending up with him being a decorated military policeman and crack sharpshooter. Now out of the military, he has foresworn all of the encumbrances, both physical and emotional, that we all take for granted in our daily lives.

He owns nothing and owes nothing and travels light with little more than the clothes on his back much like a latter day monk. He may be a 100% American at six feet, five inches in height and weighing in at 250 pounds, but there is something faintly Oriental about his distance from ordinary life almost like he is an ancient Chinese martial arts expert wandering the countryside looking for wrongs to avenge.

In this novel the tension builds from the very first page as an isolated west Texas hill country farm and its inhabitants are kept under surveillance from spotters with telescopes hidden in a gully more than a mile away. There is a sense of menace to their voyeurism as notes are taken about the comings and goings of what is referred to as "the target."

And then three killers meet in the same county and mention is made that they are heading for an unknown rendezvous. The killers are cold and calculating and their planning is meticulous due to many years of experience. I get the idea that these three make very few mistakes or they wouldn't have survived this long.

Trouble usually finds Reacher without his looking for it, as it does here while he is hitchhiking along a dusty, hot highway in west Texas where the sun is blazing and the temperatures have been above one hundred degrees for days on end. He is very surprised when a pretty Latina all alone in a big white Cadillac stops to pick him up.

He savors the pleasure of being off the blisteringly hot highway in a car with the air conditioning set on high. The conversation starts off poorly, but the woman persists in trying to draw him out. She introduces herself as Carmen Greer, a resident of Echo, a small town in west Pecos County.

Carmen haltingly confesses to Reacher that she is afraid that her husband will kill her when he gets out of prison in a few days. She has no one else to turn to for help, since her husband's family are all bigots and hate her for her ethnicity. She has been cruising the highways looking for someone to act as her protector. Reacher doesn't necessarily want to step into a family feud, but neither does he want to see any harm befall her. What makes him nervous, however, is where her conversation is heading. Carmen is clearly hinting at having him do more to help her out. 2001, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 354 pages.