Comments on: Without Fail

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:31:29 +0000

I have to admit that this book starts off well and does a terrific job of sustaining its momentum throughout the first 80% of the book. Then something goes terribly wrong.

The author hands over the writing of the book to a million monkeys pecking away at a million typewriters…

Child resolves his mystery with the lamest excuse for wanting to kill a Vice-President ever. It would be like me getting caught knocking over your mailbox when I was a kid and carrying a grudge for thirty years and then deciding to kill your kids for it.

It’s just that implausible. Readers deserve better and both Child and his editor deserve to be smacked around for the last 20% of the book.
Rating: 1 / 5

By: William K. Keller

William K. Keller — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:15:32 +0000

Going to a civilian to “red team” an operation? A female MP NCO whose specialty is neck breaking? Loading a pistol’s magazine one-handed? (That I’d like to see.) All Reacher is lacking is a cape and X-Ray vision. (Added after finishing the book.) “On the click.” Reacher is dead. The condition of the magazine spring has nothing to do with firing the first round once it has been chambered.
Rating: 1 / 5

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:30:20 +0000

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: 1 / 5

By: Betti Trapp

Betti Trapp — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:35:51 +0000

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: 2 / 5

By: Timothy Rich

Timothy Rich — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:58:54 +0000

The only reason I don’t give this work 5 stars is because Child made a cardinal mistake in describing one weapon used by the killers. Anyone who knows pistols knows that GLOCKS do not have external safeties.
Rating: 4 / 5