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Without Fail[WITHOUT FAIL 2/E][Paperback]
Without Fail <> Paperback <> LeeChild <> BerkleyPublishingGroup
Paperback
Published April 30, 2013
2 people are currently reading
5 people want to read
About the author
Lee Child
449 books33.9k followersLee Child was born October 29th, 1954 in Coventry, England, but spent his formative years in the nearby city of Birmingham. By coincidence he won a scholarship to the same high school that JRR Tolkien had attended. He went to law school in Sheffield, England, and after part-time work in the theater he joined Granada Television in Manchester for what turned out to be an eighteen-year career as a presentation director during British TV's "golden age." During his tenure his company made Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker. But he was fired in 1995 at the age of 40 as a result of corporate restructuring. Always a voracious reader, he decided to see an opportunity where others might have seen a crisis and bought six dollars' worth of paper and pencils and sat down to write a book, Killing Floor, the first in the Jack Reacher series.
Killing Floor was an immediate success and launched the series which has grown in sales and impact with every new installment. The first Jack Reacher movie, based on the novel One Shot and starring Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike, was released in December 2012.
Lee has three homes—an apartment in Manhattan, a country house in the south of France, and whatever airplane cabin he happens to be in while traveling between the two. In the US he drives a supercharged Jaguar, which was built in Jaguar's Browns Lane plant, thirty yards from the hospital in which he was born.
Lee spends his spare time reading, listening to music, and watching the Yankees, Aston Villa, or Marseilles soccer. He is married with a grown-up daughter. He is tall and slim, despite an appalling diet and a refusal to exercise.
Killing Floor was an immediate success and launched the series which has grown in sales and impact with every new installment. The first Jack Reacher movie, based on the novel One Shot and starring Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike, was released in December 2012.
Lee has three homes—an apartment in Manhattan, a country house in the south of France, and whatever airplane cabin he happens to be in while traveling between the two. In the US he drives a supercharged Jaguar, which was built in Jaguar's Browns Lane plant, thirty yards from the hospital in which he was born.
Lee spends his spare time reading, listening to music, and watching the Yankees, Aston Villa, or Marseilles soccer. He is married with a grown-up daughter. He is tall and slim, despite an appalling diet and a refusal to exercise.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 27, 2025
Jack Reacher, this time, finds himself in the service of the law — though, predictably, he renders that service in his own idiosyncratic fashion. Not only does he leap into bed with the late brother’s former flame (conveniently employed by the secret service), but he’s such a paragon of masculinity that the woman expires gazing into his eyes, whispering, "I love you." One can almost hear the string section swell.
Reacher proceeds to run intellectual rings around both the FBI and the Secret Service, who are struggling to identify the culprit behind a plot to assassinate the next Vice President of the United States. Along the way, he gleans such enlightening insights as: a compound found in shark liver is virtually identical to the sebaceous residue from the side of one’s nose. Do pause to ponder that.
Jack Reacher is, to put it mildly, more efficient than a Swiss Army knife soaked in amphetamines. He can watch a grainy CCTV video and deduce whether it has been tampered with based on — wait for it — the length of the suspects’ hair.
In short, two extraordinarily dim-witted villains have resolved to assassinate the Vice President, not for political, economic, or ideological reasons — but because, thirty years ago, his father roughed them up a bit during their misspent adolescence. A vendetta rooted in juvenile butthurt, if one may be so indelicate.
Enter Reacher, part Kasparov of the Barbarians, part Conan of the Chessboard. He partially solves an attempted assassination — just enough to whet our narrative appetite — and then, naturally, goes on the offensive. First stop? Shopping. But when Jack Reacher shops, he doesn’t purchase toothpaste, floss, or a soothing post-shave balm like you, dear reader — you effete, lily-livered, soft-palmed dandy. No. When Jack Reacher shops, he buys canons. With triggers. And two containers of ammunition.
After the proverbial excrement has collided with the rotating fan blades, Reacher ends up in the frozen wilderness of Wyoming with a stunning female companion (there are no unattractive women in Reacher’s universe). Said woman harbours some nebulous trauma that renders her averse to physical contact — and is therefore ripe for healing via Reacher’s gruff compassion and sculpted deltoids.
Because in the Jack Reacher multiverse, concepts like due process, penal codes, or rehabilitative justice are for lesser men — the sort of craven degenerates whose posteriors have been galvanised by excessive sitting. In the Reacherian theory of justice (not to be confused with Rawls), morality is a trench knife (or any knife that would put what Rambo uses to shame), a bullet to the temple, and a brisk exit to another state.
As for the mind-numbingly dull and entirely predictable finale: when Jack Reacher is staring down the barrel of a gun, he is somehow able to persuade the assailant to switch weapons — ideally to one more suited to Reacher’s preferred ballistics. He then plays blackjack with Death, hits on a 20, spins the roulette wheel of mortality, bets on 34, and, naturally, wins.
IN CONCLUSION — WITH SPOILERS: The novel is a tedious and pointless slog; overwritten, overblown, and underwhelming. The villains are truly imbecilic, their motives laughably juvenile. The entire assassination plot is fuelled not by ideology or corruption, but by a decades-old grudge born of adolescent spanking. One could hardly invent a more asinine premise.
Reacher proceeds to run intellectual rings around both the FBI and the Secret Service, who are struggling to identify the culprit behind a plot to assassinate the next Vice President of the United States. Along the way, he gleans such enlightening insights as: a compound found in shark liver is virtually identical to the sebaceous residue from the side of one’s nose. Do pause to ponder that.
Jack Reacher is, to put it mildly, more efficient than a Swiss Army knife soaked in amphetamines. He can watch a grainy CCTV video and deduce whether it has been tampered with based on — wait for it — the length of the suspects’ hair.
In short, two extraordinarily dim-witted villains have resolved to assassinate the Vice President, not for political, economic, or ideological reasons — but because, thirty years ago, his father roughed them up a bit during their misspent adolescence. A vendetta rooted in juvenile butthurt, if one may be so indelicate.
Enter Reacher, part Kasparov of the Barbarians, part Conan of the Chessboard. He partially solves an attempted assassination — just enough to whet our narrative appetite — and then, naturally, goes on the offensive. First stop? Shopping. But when Jack Reacher shops, he doesn’t purchase toothpaste, floss, or a soothing post-shave balm like you, dear reader — you effete, lily-livered, soft-palmed dandy. No. When Jack Reacher shops, he buys canons. With triggers. And two containers of ammunition.
After the proverbial excrement has collided with the rotating fan blades, Reacher ends up in the frozen wilderness of Wyoming with a stunning female companion (there are no unattractive women in Reacher’s universe). Said woman harbours some nebulous trauma that renders her averse to physical contact — and is therefore ripe for healing via Reacher’s gruff compassion and sculpted deltoids.
Because in the Jack Reacher multiverse, concepts like due process, penal codes, or rehabilitative justice are for lesser men — the sort of craven degenerates whose posteriors have been galvanised by excessive sitting. In the Reacherian theory of justice (not to be confused with Rawls), morality is a trench knife (or any knife that would put what Rambo uses to shame), a bullet to the temple, and a brisk exit to another state.
As for the mind-numbingly dull and entirely predictable finale: when Jack Reacher is staring down the barrel of a gun, he is somehow able to persuade the assailant to switch weapons — ideally to one more suited to Reacher’s preferred ballistics. He then plays blackjack with Death, hits on a 20, spins the roulette wheel of mortality, bets on 34, and, naturally, wins.
IN CONCLUSION — WITH SPOILERS: The novel is a tedious and pointless slog; overwritten, overblown, and underwhelming. The villains are truly imbecilic, their motives laughably juvenile. The entire assassination plot is fuelled not by ideology or corruption, but by a decades-old grudge born of adolescent spanking. One could hardly invent a more asinine premise.
March 20, 2024
I quite liked this entry in the Jack Reacher series. They've all been good, but this one was nicely structured as a mystery, a police procedural, and a continuing character study of Reacher himself.
This time around, Reacher is called to help the United States Secret Service test their protective capabilities, because the vice president-elect has been targeted for assassination. The threats are real and the assassin(s) are clever, but no one knows who they are. Their knowledge of protocol and procedure could mean that they're current or former law enforcement, maybe even people who were formerly in the Secret Service themselves -- or maybe they're just fans of police work and have done their homework. And why are they targeting a vice president who hasn't even been inaugurated yet? Is it political, personal, or something else entirely? Read and find out!
I will note two things. First, I noticed yet another bit of disconnect between American customs and British author Lee Child. Occasionally there will be little bits of dialogue that give it away (for example, I've seen where Child says that Reacher does something "straight away," which is a very British construct), but in this case it's a terminology situation. After a particular threat, Reacher, Secret Service agent Froelich, and Reacher's cohort Neagley are put into a kind of protective custody. They are checked into rooms in a "motel," with personnel placed in the "lobby" and in the "hallways." Well, motels are good for escapes but not particularly good for security, as typically all motel doors open to the outside, there are no hallways (except maybe a breezeway where the ice bin and vending machines are located), and the lobby is usually about the size of a living room. Child is probably thinking of hotels, rather than motels, but he can be forgiven for not understanding the nuance -- I just found it amusing.
The other thing I will note is that this book, while almost certainly not a minute-by-minute, play-by-play guidebook of how the highest government officials in the U.S. are protected, definitely gives the reader at least an idea of everything that goes into this task. Seeing the president and vice president (among others) on TV is one thing; it's something else entirely to catch a glimpse of the 24/7/365 duties of those assigned to maintain security around them. Definitely an eye-opener for the everyday reader.
This time around, Reacher is called to help the United States Secret Service test their protective capabilities, because the vice president-elect has been targeted for assassination. The threats are real and the assassin(s) are clever, but no one knows who they are. Their knowledge of protocol and procedure could mean that they're current or former law enforcement, maybe even people who were formerly in the Secret Service themselves -- or maybe they're just fans of police work and have done their homework. And why are they targeting a vice president who hasn't even been inaugurated yet? Is it political, personal, or something else entirely? Read and find out!
I will note two things. First, I noticed yet another bit of disconnect between American customs and British author Lee Child. Occasionally there will be little bits of dialogue that give it away (for example, I've seen where Child says that Reacher does something "straight away," which is a very British construct), but in this case it's a terminology situation. After a particular threat, Reacher, Secret Service agent Froelich, and Reacher's cohort Neagley are put into a kind of protective custody. They are checked into rooms in a "motel," with personnel placed in the "lobby" and in the "hallways." Well, motels are good for escapes but not particularly good for security, as typically all motel doors open to the outside, there are no hallways (except maybe a breezeway where the ice bin and vending machines are located), and the lobby is usually about the size of a living room. Child is probably thinking of hotels, rather than motels, but he can be forgiven for not understanding the nuance -- I just found it amusing.
The other thing I will note is that this book, while almost certainly not a minute-by-minute, play-by-play guidebook of how the highest government officials in the U.S. are protected, definitely gives the reader at least an idea of everything that goes into this task. Seeing the president and vice president (among others) on TV is one thing; it's something else entirely to catch a glimpse of the 24/7/365 duties of those assigned to maintain security around them. Definitely an eye-opener for the everyday reader.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews