One of the interesting things about Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series of books, so far, is that Reacher finds himself in a completely different situation in each volume.

It makes sense.

Reacher is former military. A man who walked away from being an Army major with the military police. He wanders across the United States with no real plans other than wanting to see America on his own terms and being left alone. 

Of course, he’s never left alone.

In each book, he haphazardly falls into a new situation: He arrives in town at the same time a murder is discovered – viewed as a big menacing stranger, he becomes a suspect; he helps a woman using a cane pick up dropped dry-cleaning at the same moment a group of men move to kidnap her as the target in a coordinated ambush; his former military commander dies and he is reunited with the commander’s daughter as a man seeks to quiet her; he is picked up as a hitchhiker by an abused woman desperate for help from a big menacing stranger.

He deals with the crooked big fish in a small pond, racist militants bent on seceding from the nation, violent blackmailers, serial killers, abusive families and the secrets of small-town politics, etc. 

Each book, so far, has an entirely new supporting cast (with only one barely having an exception). Each book, so far, has a different feel – one seems like a political thriller, then an adventure, then a mystery, etc.

Each book, so far, takes Reacher to a different part of the United States. Readers see the country as Reacher hitchhikes, flies and rambles across the nation.

As mentioned in previous book reviews, there are so many Jack Reacher books available, a reader could read one a month for more than two years straight. Finish one and who knows where Child will take Reacher next.

In “Echo Burning,” Reacher wants to duck out of a Texas town after raising the ire of a cop – Reacher punched him out the previous night, not knowing the jerk beside him in a bar was an off-duty police officer. Hitchhiking, Reacher is picked up by a woman trying to escape her in-laws before her abusive husband is released from prison. 

She’s been cruising the highways looking for a roughneck to kill her husband. Reacher refuses the job of hitman but he does become involved in helping the woman and her young daughter.

“Echo Burning” places Reacher in the summer heat of southern Texas. In addition to helping the woman, he becomes embroiled in older reports of rogue authorities killing immigrants coming across the border.

The fifth Jack Reacher book continues the tradition, so far, of giving the character and the stories a far reach.