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Readers > Echo Five > Comments And Reviews
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Comments And Reviews
"Interdicting terrorists in bid Ladens' Third Front, a mysterious death, and corruption. Jason Ender finds it all in his assignment to the Horn of Africa; no one does it better. Wow." --- ForemostPress.com
ECHO FIVE is the 15th novel by highly talented writer David Chacko. At home in Istanbul, Mr. Chacko is a world traveler who is intimately familiar with various cultures and also the times that both culture and religion clash. His works have reached high acclaim; his genres vary although crime and mystery are central to each and every one.
ECHO FIVE is the third Jason Ender mystery. This time around he braves war, infighting, jihad, espionage, and profiteering as he investigates an alleged suicide of a premier interpreter at the Horn of Africa. Before long he pits himself against a thinly veiled conspiracy of those seeking to profit from the misery of war, while United States government officials simply turn a blind eye in the hopes of maintaining the status quo. The final revelation is startling and eerily upsetting.
ECHO FIVE is the kind of masterpiece you have come to expect from David Chacko. It is a candid "what if" about the things that go on when the press and the public cannot watch and when those who could speak out choose to close ranks. A breathtaking read, one cannot help but wonder whether Mr. Chacko is prophet, insider, or perhaps a little of both.
Sylvia Cochran
RoundTableReviews.com
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In the midst of the writers’ strike, what the Screenwriter’s Guild needed was a great writer such as Chacko in their back pocket. While self-published, this book is a testament to a prolific writer that keeps you glued to your seat with his non-stop action and excellent storytelling ability. While this is the third in Chacko’s series revolving around interrogator (also called "echos") Jason Ender, there isn’t much back history repeated like you’d read in a Harry Potter novel.
Ender is sent to, what bin Laden called, The Third Front, also known as the Horn of Africa, to work with Echo Five, an Arabic translator, in order to question prisoner 91. Lt. Hours before Ender de-planes, Carolyn Fordyce kills herself at the self-sufficient cell community of government employees and civilians that are working for the same cause in the heat of sun, and surrounded by terrorism and subversive plots thicker than a police officer's donut-filled stomach.
Fordyce’s suicide (a.k.a. Echo Five), turns Enders normally curious brain on fire with a burning passion to discover the truth about what happened to her "behind the wire." What he discovers is a conspiracy that involves government contractors who work for The Donner Part; a sexual situation involving a Somalian woman who was a local translator for any echo on staff that might need her; and fraudulent activity that goes all the way up the chain of command. Chacko is a tour de force writer in a world filled with constant conflict, war, genocide and jihad.
Armchair Interviews says: Engaging, interesting, this espionage thriller is a book you can’t put down. Would make an excellent movie.
Michele E. Davis
ArmchairInterviews.com
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Echo Five, the third novel in the Jason Ender series, by David Chacko, is another blistering ride through the badlands of espionage and terrorism. The two previous novels in the series are Less Than a Shadow and The Peacock Angel. This time the action is literally blistering, as the novel is set in one of the hottest places on earth—a military installation at the Horn of Africa that guards the strategic Red Sea.
Ender is assigned to debrief terrorists arriving from all over East Africa—the area bin Laden has called the Third Front. Ender quickly finds that his mission is complicated by the suicide of the Arabic interrogator who was to assist him. Lieutenant Carolyn Fordyce—also known as Echo Five—seems to have taken her life for no clear reason—or too many. Ender's search to find the real motivation for the death of a young officer drives the story to its end.
Along the way, Ender's investigation provides a revealing look into the life of a camp where everything is done in the name of national security. This place, so much like a small town in hell, could be found in various forms in the global village that the U.S. military maintains. So the book is curiously American as it passes in a completely foreign place. Nothing much is overlooked in the mirror image of ourselves that the story reflects. Patriotism and selflessness, incompetence and corruption, Islamic and Christian fundamentalism, all play the parts we should by now know well.
These opposing tendencies come together in the climax of the story as it weaves the life of Echo Five together with the lives of the terrorists she questioned so relentlessly. The culmination of the plot comes suddenly and violently as the death of a dedicated officer and the plans of a group of dedicated terrorists arrive at parallel resolutions. It's a strange but satisfying ending that manages to settle as many questions as it leaves for the reader to think about. In that, he's much like Jason Ender.
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"High wire now has a new meaning."
--- ForemostPress.com
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