Small Wars by Lee Child

A young lieutenant colonel, in a stylish handmade uniform, roars through the damp woods of Georgia in her new silver Porsche - until she meets a very tall soldier with a broken-down car.

What could connect a cold-blooded off-post shooting with Reacher, his elder brother Joe, and a secretive unit of pointy-heads from the Pentagon?

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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Reacher is still in the army for this one, and is pulled from his assignment to take over for an injured MP. Major Reacher's first job at his new post is to investigate the murder of one of the Pentagon's fastest rising stars.

To help him out (and to help train his underlings) Reacher gets Frances Neagly assigned to him. This story turns out to be a great spotlight for Neagly, actually. She even gets the big fight! This case hits close to home and ends up revealing a lot more about the Pentagon and the victim than anyone expected.

Dick Hill's performance was fine – there wasn't a lot for him to do here, but what he did worked.

This one didn't work all that well for me – the solution was unsatisfying, and Reacher's reaction to it might even be worse.

This one may be referred to as #19.5 in the Reacher series, but it's more like a flashback as an oxygen using Joe is part of the story. And that may be why I liked this one better than the other Reacher novella I recently read. Well, that and Neagley, who oddly has become a character I look forward to seeing. The characters all seemed like themselves and the story was tightly written.

A super quick short story that takes place during Reacher's military time in 1989.

I admit to being slightly surprised when Crawford's killer was revealed and I continued in anticipation to see how Reacher would deal with it. A short story that packed a punch and gave a little bit of deserved spotlight to how badass Frances Neagley was.