2. Small Wars - Lee Child

Jack Reacher #19.5
(1:30) on Audible
audio read by Dick Hill
2015 Transworld Digital
44 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery "short story"
Finished
Goodreads rating: 3.97
My rating:  4
Setting:  Georgia

First line/s:  "In the spring of 1989 Caroline Crawford was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel.  She bought a silver Porsche to celebrate.  She had family money, people said, and plenty of it.  A trust fund, maybe.  Some eminent relative.  Maybe an inventor.  Her uniforms were tailored in D. C. by the same shop that made suits for the president.  She was held to be the richest woman in the army.  Not that the bar was high."

My comments:  Short and sweet...a short story, I guess.  Another interesting look at brother Joe.... It's fun to read (listen to) a shortie in between the regular book-length ones.  Decent story, too.

Goodreads synopsis:  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?

26. The Affair - Lee Child

#16 Jack Reacher (this is the prequel)
audio read by Dick Hill
11 unabridged cds
14 hours
$45.00 TPPL
2011, Random House Audio
416 pages
4 **** (Really liked it)

Setting: 1997, in a tiny town called Carter Crossing, Mississippi, home to Fort Kelham, an army base used as training grounds for special forces troops.
OSS:  When Jack Reacher is dispatched to Carter Crossing, Mississippi to make sure the army isn't involved - or even mentioned - in the murders of three beautiful young women, he teams up with local sheriff Elizabeth Devereaux to get to the bottom of it all.

This is the story of how ... and why ... Jack Reacher left the army.  It's the story of his last job as an Army major.  It is Jack Reacher through and through, his cleverness, his seeing the minute clues that others would never even consider, and it's also about his stance for what's good, and what's right.  The way he decides to deal with it all at the very end of the book does bother me somewhat, but I guess that's what makes Reacher Reacher, right?  He trutsts... and lusts after ... Devereaux right off the bat, but when she becomes implicated in the crimes, you can't help but wonder.  Child keeps the reader thinking every step of the way.  The story went really fast and was really good.