A big part of the appeal of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series is the diversity of storylines.

With the former military police officer roaming the United States like a nomad in his retirement, the author can place Reacher in all sorts of situations.

In the first half dozen books, the plots have placed Reacher being inadvertently kidnapped by a paramilitary organization with plans to secede from the United States, pitted him against a violent blackmailer using a false identity, had him helping the FBI find a serial killer, helping a young woman resolve a horrible domestic abuse situation while figuring out a decades-old unsolved mystery, etc.

In “Without Fail,” the Secret Service enlists him to help find the person or people threatening the vice president-elect of the United States. A Secret Service agent seeks his help because Reacher’s dead brother was once a Treasury Department agent. 

In some of the stories, Child reveals the bad guys from the get-go. The author walks readers through their minds as Reacher tracks them, breaks them or overcomes them. In other books, readers are as much in the dark as Reacher about the bad guys. “Without Fail” falls in the latter camp with Reacher, the Secret Service and readers uncertain who is threatening the vice president-elect.

Meanwhile, Reacher works with a woman – the Secret Service agent who contacts him – who was in love with his brother, Joe, and he is forced to reexamine the estranged relationship he had with his brother. 

While some action/thriller authors place their series protagonists in similar situations in each book, Child keeps readers guessing what kind of situation Reacher will face from volume to volume.

The one thing that is consistent is Reacher himself. His gigantic physicality, strength, skills, confidence and need to keep moving never flag – at least not in these early novels. 

Child’s style packs a wallop as big as Reacher’s fist.