Without Fail

Without Fail is the sixth novel in the Jack Reacher series by the British writer Lee Child, published by Putnam in 2002. Unlike the earlier books in the series it is written in the third person.

Reacher is a former military policeman with no fixed address, which is what makes him useful to the Secret Service agent who approaches him: he can review the protection arrangements for the Vice President-elect and demonstrate what an outsider would be able to do. The premise of the book is that he has to think like the assassin in order to find the weakness in the detail, and that the people who want the vice president dead have already thought about the same problem from the other side. Child wrote the character as a wanderer who arrives in a situation and settles it, and this novel uses the American political security apparatus and its procedures as the machinery of the plot, along with a small cast of officials who are not sure they can trust each other.

The series had begun with Killing Floor in 1997, and the novels are written to be read in any order, though this one follows the character's arrival in Washington rather than on the road.