Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Most Anticipated Books of 2025!

Summary and Reviews of Echo Burning by Lee Child

Echo Burning by Lee Child

Echo Burning

A Jack Reacher Thriller

by Lee Child
  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • First Published:
  • Jun 1, 2001, 368 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Apr 2002, 432 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

Brilliantly plotted. ..For anyone who thinks the hard-boiled genre is growing soft around the edges.

Ex-military cop Jack Reacher returns in this latest in the award-winning series critics call "spectacular" (The Seattle Times), "relentless" (Denver Post), and "perfect" (The New York Times Book Review).

Reacher is hitching through the heat of West Texas and getting desperate for a ride. The last thing he's worried about is exactly who picks him up.

She's called Carmen. She's a good-looking young woman, she has a beautiful little girl...and she has married into the wrong family. They're called the Greers. They're a bitter and miserly clan, and they've made her life a living hell. Worse, her monster of a husband is soon due out of prison. So she needs protection, and she needs it now.

Lawyers can't help. Cops can't be trusted. So Reacher goes home with her to the lonely ranch where nothing is as it seems and where evil swirls around them like dust in a storm. Within days, Carmen's husband is dead-and simmering secrets send Echo, Texas, up in flames.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

Boston Globe
Echo Burning is the best mystery I have read this year; best written, best plotted, best in just about every way.

Booklist
This fifth Reacher novel is brilliantly plotted. ..For anyone who thinks the hard-boiled genre is growing soft around the edges.

Library Journal
Child's Jack Reacher series just keeps on getting better.

Publishers Weekly
Set in a literally and figuratively smoldering landscape, this is a clean, infectious story that taps deeply into two troubling human emotions the psychology of abuse and the desire for retribution.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Echo Burning, try these:

  • Honky Tonk Samurai jacket

    Honky Tonk Samurai

    by Joe R. Lansdale

    Published 2016

    About this book

    More by this author

    Only Hap and Leonard would catch a cold case with hot cars, hot women, and ugly skinheads.

  • The Turnaround jacket

    The Turnaround

    by George Pelecanos

    Published 2009

    About this book

    More by this author

    On a hot summer afternoon in 1972, three teenagers drove into an unfamiliar neighborhood and six lives were altered forever. Thirty five years later, one survivor of that day reaches out to another, opening a door that could lead to salvation. But another survivor is now out of prison, looking for reparation in any form he can find it.

We have 6 read-alikes for Echo Burning, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Lee Child
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Wager
    by David Grann
    From the bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a gripping story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Harlem Rhapsody
    by Victoria Christopher Murray

    The extraordinary story of the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance.

  • Book Jacket

    Beast of the North Woods
    by Annelise Ryan

    When a local fisherman is mauled to death, it seems like the only possible cause is a mythical creature.

  • Book Jacket

    Three Days in June
    by Anne Tyler

    A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

Who Said...

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

D to T N

and be entered to win..