Without Fail (Jack Reacher, No. 6)

A covert group of assassins has the Vice President of the United States in their sights. They've planned well. There's just one thing they didn't plan on: Jack Reacher.

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A female Secret Service agent comes to Reacher with an astounding request: "I want to hire you to assassinate the Vice President of the United States." According to her this is the only way to test the security system she has in place to protect the newly elected V.P.

When she makes this request, she does leave out one significant detail: a team of accomplished killers have already drawn a bead on the Vice President. They, of course, are not aware of Reacher's involvement.

Child has spun a complex, unsettling thriller that will satisfy the most ardent suspense fiction fan.

- Gail Cooke

36 of 39 found the following review helpful:

Lee Child At His BestMay 09, 2002
By Sharon Katz
Some people want Vice President-elect, Brook Armstrong dead. They tried to kill him in September. They had the silencer on the gun and the perfect location but the bullet missed. No one in the crowd heard the gun shot. Armstrong's hair stirred as the bullet moved past him but he thought it was nothing more than the wind. The attempt was a failure and no one noticed. They would try again. Soon. ...

So begins Lee Child's newest and best book to date, WITHOUT FAIL. ...This is the sixth in the series.

WITHOUT FAIL takes the readers behind the scenes of the Secret Service and shows us how they react to situations, why they do what they do to protect the people they're hired to protect, and we also get to see the measures they go through to do their job successfully.

Lee Child's books get better and better with each addition to the series. WITHOUT FAIL is a real page-turner with plenty of excitement all through it. Child has not only made a detailed study of his character, but he has delved into the workings of the military and government. Yes, on occasion Reacher and Neagley sometimes seem to have superhuman powers, but the readers will willingly forgive those moments to cheer on the heroes of this story.

This new fast paced novel not only keeps you on your toes trying to figure out who wants to kill the Vice President-elect but also keeps you wondering why. Child gives us the answers to the questions as the book progresses. We start to understand how personal childhood experiences control our actions as adults.

In WITHOUT FAIL, Child has written a wonderfully thrilling story. I highly recommend this well written book.

23 of 24 found the following review helpful:

Is Jack becoming a social animal?Apr 29, 2003
By Joseph Haschka
I'm attracted to Lee Child's novels because of the hardboiled and self-contained nature of his hero, Jack Reacher. After almost two decades as a military cop in the U.S. Army, Jack now wanders the U.S. with only the clothes on his back - no car, no charge cards - and a penchant for crossing paths with assorted villains. Very soon, the reader begins to feel sorry for the Bad Guys.

Reacher is so unpolished that one sometimes wonders how he reached officer grade O-4 (Major), which would imply managing a wardrobe, knotting a tie, and displaying minimal social skills in the officers' mess and at the CO's annual Christmas party. It's not that Jack is a Neanderthal; he just doesn't care to run with the rest of the lemmings anymore.

In WITHOUT FAIL, M.E. Froelich, who heads the Secret Service protection detail for the newly elected Vice President, Brook Armstrong, hires Reacher to audit the security of the new Veep's protective screen. Froelich is also the ex-girlfriend of Jack's dead brother. After finding holes through which a potential assassin could drive a monster SUV, Reacher learns why the Service really wants his help. The VP is receiving credible death threats. And it may be an inside job.

I would've awarded WITHOUT FAIL at least one more star had it not been a Jack Reacher adventure. But it is, and here our prickly protagonist has to play well with others: Froelich, her boss Stuyvesant, FBI guy Bannon, and a colleague from Reacher's old Army days, ex-Sergeant Frances Neagley. Reacher's talent for punitive violence is severely curtailed compared to past episodes, revealing itself only at the very beginning and the very end. In between, Jack is reduced to being a consultant, even to the point of wearing a suit. Say it ain't so, Lee!

The most interesting character is Neagley, now employed by a civilian security firm. She's ostensibly more deadly at physical combat than Reacher himself, and he admits to being afraid of her skills. So, the reader waits, hoping she'll unleash some mayhem. In the meantime, we learn that Frances, while being a little in love with her old military boss, has a severe dislike of being touched due to some unspecified trauma in her past. Unfortunately, Neagley remains mostly a cipher, and the entertainment value of her character is left pretty much unexploited. Perhaps she'll appear in a future Reacher novel. Better still, the author should give her a series of her own.

I hope the next Reacher thriller is JACK IS BACK. With a vengeance.

13 of 13 found the following review helpful:

The Day of Jack ReacherSep 11, 2004
By Gary Griffiths
While Frederick Forsyth's "The Day of the Jackal" is the classic assassination thriller, Lee Child hits another home run with "Without Fail", a page turner with all the technical accuracy of `Jackal" and the extra dose of adrenaline one would expect from Lee Child. Child's hulking loner Jack Reacher certainly has the mind of an assassin, and in "Without Fail", he is contracted by Secret Service agent M.E. Froelich to audit the security for the Vice President of the United States, the target of a threatened assassination. Froelich happens to be the former lover of Reacher's older brother, Joe, the former Treasury Department agent killed in action years before. What follows is an extremely credible portrayal of the US Secret Service and the challenges they face in protecting the holders of our highest public offices. As with all Child/Reacher novels, this one is well researched rich in detail. But just as the detail begins to hint at tedium, Child metes out another measure of plot twist, keeping the reader anxiously waiting for the next installment. Lee Child is a true student of pace, understanding the fine balance between plot development and action. Reacher's no-nonsense perspective on justice, crime and punishment is faithfully intact, but in "Without Fail", we meet Reacher's female equivalent, the formidable and lethal Frances Neagley, an ex-Army buddy of Reacher's. Like Child's hero, this is an austere, blunt, and powerful novel, ultimately predictable but never disappointing along the way. Entertainment in print simply does not get much better than this.

14 of 15 found the following review helpful:

Not a failure!May 30, 2002
By Tania "dk smilla"
Without fail is the latest installment of the Jack Reacher series, and I can honestly tell you that Lee Child keeps on getting better and better.

An unusual proposal (how would you like to assasinate a Vice President?) leads to a page turning thriller with intelligent and sometimes unexpected twists and turns.

You don't need the background from previous novels (L. Child neatly sums everything up in few sentences), but I can only recommend that you read 'em all up.

More, please!

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