Rating: 
Summary: Finally, a Great Reacher Novel
Review: I really enjoy Reacher novels for the character and action but the plots tend to be farcical and sometimes even ludicrous which spoils the fun.Finally, here, we have a Reacher novel that has a nice, tight, believable plot. Reacher is contacted by the head of the Secret Service's security detail for the Vice-President to conduct an audit of the VP's security because of an assassination threat and security breach. (She also happens to be his dead brother's former lover). Reacher, along a with former Marine comrade, Frances Neagley, take on the job. And the ride begins, with a vengeance. Probably the best of the Reacher series.
Rating: 
Summary: Jack is back!
Review: With each Jack Reacher adventure, Lee Child allows us to learn a little more about this elusive all-American hero, filling in the details of man of few words, unselfconscious competence & a contentment wherein he finds himself, wherever that may be. In this genre, happy heroes are far & few between. Don't get me wrong, Jack Reacher is no comedian nor a fatuous fellow! It's just that the things that bother everyone else don't bother him...no baggage, no guilt, no regrets. Perfect spook material. In WITHOUT FAIL, Jack joins the team protecting the Vice President-elect, ostensibly as an advisor. Except he's recruited to do something quite different. He calls on his old military co-worker, the beautiful & deadly Frances Neagley, to cover his back. When Jack learns about the threatening letters, everything changes. Not soon enough, he sees how the security tapes are lying, & that likely suspects are totally innocent. Too soon two men, resembling the Veep in remarkable details, are killed & a compelling chase from the Beltway into the Wild West, ricochets like a bullet from a silenced rifle. Top notch reading with a little love, lots of insights, & loads of action.
Rating: 
Summary: Is Jack becoming a social animal?
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: A Man's Book
Review: This book is action packed and has entertainment galore, for men mostly, but for women also who like James Bond type stories of hidden assassins and detailed descriptions of weapons and ammo. A plot has been set to assassinate the Vice-President elect of the United States. The why is answered at the end of the story, but only one Secret Service man is aware of the plot. Someone has infiltrated that elite group, and now there's only one man in the entire world who can capture the would-be assassin. Jack Reacher, brother of Joe Reacher, a former Secret Service Agent now deceased (although we never find out how Joe died), is an "outsider", hired to play the role of an assassin, to find the loopholes and the errors in the Secret Service's plans to protect the Vice President-elect Brook Armstrong. Jack Reacher does a great job, but why and who wants to asassinate Armstrong?Is there a secret in his past? It's time to find out. Good plot, well developed characters, action packed, but just not my kind of book. Perhaps you will enjoy it better.
Rating:
Summary: Much better than previous Jack Reacher novels
Review: I started reading the Reacher novel series a couple of years ago. the first one was great, the next one pretty good. By the time I got to Tripwire, I couldn't finish the book. Like many series, the hero had gone from tough and uncommunicative to the ridiculous--a parody of himself. He was the world's toughest human, and the villain was the world's nastiest...well, you get the idea. This comes back to amuch more simple plot and simple premise. It has just the right amount of twists and turns to keep us interested, and I can read a chapter or two, put it down for a few days, pick it up again and follow the plot--not too complex. In addition, he doesn't get overly tangled in the Washington political web. It's a very engaging book and quite well written. Much better than most of this series.
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Summary: Bad Guys Almost Won
Review: This mystery is written with intelligence, knowledge and compassion. The bad guys have a reason to be bad. Of course they overdo it. And the good guys are very human, not robot or killing machines. At the center is Brook Armstrong, newly elected Vice President waiting for the inauguration. And then arrives a threatening letter, intercepted by the Secret Service. Stuyvesant, the leader for the job of finding those who keep threatening Armstrong, puts M. E. Froehlich in charge. At age 35, she is a seasoned investigator. But she does accept the help of former agent Jack Reacher and his helpmate Neagley; she is now a private detective. The human factor is Froehlich who used to be in love with Joe, Ranchers older brother. But Joe dumped her some years ago and is now dead. But his brother Jack looks and acts too much like Joe for Froehlich to ignore it. The threatening letter keep coming in. How are they delivered? Should they be taken seriously? Who on earth could have sent them? Slowly the mystery unravels while Armstrong gets ever closer to getting killed. It is a good book, not your usual sloppy potboiler. I recommend it for relaxation.
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Summary: Macho Jacko
Review: Jack Recher, everyone's all American tough guy. He has knowledge that makes 007 seem in pre school. From proper armor to Russian nose lubricant for wrist watches he outshines all others. All kidding aside he is always a good read, this is my third book and I plan to read them all.
Rating: 
Summary: 1 Star for Chapter 1 only
Review: I am a disappointed Reacher fan. I enjoyed all of the previous Reacher novels and they were one of the four or five books I bought in hardcover because I couldn't wait to read them. Without Fail failed with me. Too slow moving. Dozens of pages watching videotapes (might as well be paint drying). Chapter One was good old Reacher material. Then it died. Too much espionage and psychological stuff, not enough action.
Try a new author who knows how to give you what you want. Try Double Dealing.
Rating:
Summary: Violates the basic rule of mysteries
Review: NOTE - SPOILERS AHEAD. I am stunned that no other reviewer has mentioned the fundamental flaw of this book. This is a mystery - who is trying to kill the vice-president? Like any good mystery it invites the reader to sleuth along with the investigators. The reader rightly expects that the bad guy is a character in the book; the question is, which one? But in this book, the bad guys are not characters in the book, they simply drop from the heavens once the story is 90 percent finished, leaving the reader feeling fundamentally cheated. I found this doubly disappointing because I had thought that Child understood this rule - Tripwire, for example, was a near to a perfect mystery as I have read. It leaves the reader with the sense that all of the clues were there, and had he just thought about them harder, he could have solved this, too. It is too bad, because Jack Reacher is indeed a great, escapist fiction character, and Child has a flair for research, economical writing and complex plotting. But one more book like this and I will give up on this series!
Rating:
Summary: Wihtout Fail , but not without fizzle.
Review: With the latest published work of Lee Child, I was mightily disappointed. 'Without Fail' is nowhere near as exciting, or as well-written, as 'Die Trying' and 'Tripwire'. I was slightly bored by his 'Echo Burning', but this last one had me yawning. It was reminiscent of 'In The Line of Fire', but at the same time it didn't measure up to that plot, either in content, excitement, or suspense. The only saving grace in this book, was the demise of a thoroughly unlikeable, and unbelievable female character. Froelich had a personality profile that would either preclude her from being an Agent, or cause her to be re-evaluated and made redundant.
Also, why not spice up the plot by going for the Top Man himself? Did Mr. Child really want to be different, or did he lack the nerve to write convincingly about an attempted, Presidential assassination? As for Reacher's motives for taking on the job, well... rational and logical, but to take us into a clothes shop for a moment's respite was boring in the extreme. The biggest drawback to the plot however, is the motivation for the attempt on the Vice-President. Surely, an author of Mr. Child's stature, could have come up with a much more convincing motive to assassinate a politician, of whatever standing. Or was Mr. Child merely being different again? I am afraid, this book fizzled out for me and I hope the next offering, gives us back the real Jack Reacher. I shall give it a chance, but I am not optiimistic, as I believe it is going to be a 'prequel'. To my mind, that's another way of spelling disaster. Come on Mr. Child, you can do better.
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