Echo Burning

Authors: Lee Child
Narrator: Dick Hill
Duration: 17H 34m
My Rating: 🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑
Tags: action - detective

---

Another great book happening in Texas. Horses, ranches, pickups, immigrans, lots of stuff going on. Interesting book. Great narration by Dick Hill still.

Quotes:

She said it with a dying fall in her voice, the way a person might refer back to a tragedy in the past, a car wreck, a plane crash, a fatal diagnosis. The way a person might refer back to the day her life changed forever.

He knew in principle that a blacksmith made horseshoes, which were iron things horses had nailed to their feet. He knew there was a charcoal brazier involved, and a bellows, and a great deal of rhythmic hammering. An anvil was required, and a trough of water.

Bottles are no real use as weapons. Except in the movies, where they make them out of spun sugar and print the labels on tissue paper. A real bottle won’t break against a table top. The glass is too thick. They just make a loud banging noise. They have some marginal use as clubs, but the pool table worried him more. … Short of a shotgun, a pool cue is the best barroom weapon ever invented. Short enough to be handy, long enough to be useful, made out of fine hardwood and nicely weighted with lead.

So these guys had some kind of dumb courage. And strength. And resilience. And they were accustomed to pain and injury. But they were also accustomed to some kind of a pattern. Some kind of a structured buildup. Some kind of a measured countdown, before the action suddenly started. He didn’t know for sure how it went. Maybe three, two, one, go. Maybe ten, nine, eight.

Night workers are always tougher. Less regular contact with the public, less immediate supervision, makes them think they’re king of the castle.

Professionals get uneasy with things they’ve never done before. They always do. That’s the nature of professionalism. Professionals feel best when they stick to what they know.

Abort horizon - Whenever the team was split, the woman set an abort horizon. Which meant that you waited until the time had passed, and then, if the team wasn’t together again, you got the hell out, every man for himself.

First thing out of a gun barrel is an explosion of hot gas. If the muzzle was tight against the forehead, the gas punches in under the skin and then can’t go anyplace, because of the bone. So it punches right back out again. It tears itself a big star-shaped hole. … Next thing out of the barrel is flame. If it was a real close shot, two or three inches, but not a contact shot, we’d see burning of the skin. In a small ring shape. … Next thing out is soot. Soft, smudgy black stuff. So if it was a shot from six or eight inches, we’d see soot smudging on his forehead. Maybe a patch a couple inches wide. … “Next thing out is gunpowder particles. Little bits of un-burned carbon. No gunpowder is perfect. Some of it doesn’t burn. It just blasts out, in a spray. It hammers in under the skin. Tiny black dots.