‘Without Fail’ by Lee Child

Published by Bantam Press,
1 April 2002.
ISBN: 978-0-59304682 (HB)

In this adventure Jack Reacher is tracked by the USA Secret Service to audit their protection of the newly elected Vice President. You may think that with no job, no ID, and no last known address Jack Reacher is highly unlikely to pay lip service to the Secret Service, and you would be right. However, the person doing the asking is the ex-girlfriend of Jo Reacher, Jack’s dead older brother.

His audit uncovers several holes in the current protection of the Vice President elect, and then Em tells him the real reason that she has enlisted his help.

On a personal level accepting the assignment has taken him into the past, and his dead brother, and in doing so he learns a little more of his own past. Who he is, and why he is the way he is.

This is a gripping tale, one that keeps you turning pages eager to learn more. When the unexpected happens, it leaves you gasping.  

Meticulously plotted, this is a ‘not to be missed’ book. Highly recommended.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Hayes

Lee Child was born in 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 theatre 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 paper and pencils and sat down to write a book, Killing Floor, the first in the Jack Reacher series. It was an immediate success and launched the series which has grown in sales and impact with every new instalment. 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.