Killing Floor by Lee Child

 This is the first published of Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. I read it a long time ago, but had mostly forgotten it. What I hadn't forgotten is the character, Jack Reacher. In giving us a man who moves through the world free of all the burdens that our societies and cultures place upon us, and also unbothered by having to forego the wonderful things that our societies and cultures make available to us, Lee Child gives us an attractive fantasy. Imagine being entirely unburdened and free.

But of course things can't be that simple. Reacher inevitably gets involved in something. In this case his brother, with whom, like everyone else who has passed through his life, he has been out of touch, is murdered, and his murder turns out to be one small piece of a large pile of crime and corruption. Reacher ends up having to put things right.  

With admirable competence and cool—this, too, is part of the fantasy—Reacher does put things right. Having done so, he leaves town, realizing that he couldn't live the life the woman with whom he had become involved would want any more than she could wander America's highways without even a change of clothes with Reacher. He heads out, unburdened, until the next complication arises.

(That Blind Blake is a presence in this book raises it in my esteem.)