The 35th Precinct

I finished The Onion Field earlier tonight. The uneven writing made it onerous to read at times, but behind the dry prose was a heartbreaking story, not just of the murder of Officer Ian Campbell in a desolate onion field, but of a police department that had little regard for its traumatized or psychologically-damaged officers and a justice system that further damages and abuses the victims that have turned to it for redress. Yes, I know that those checks, balances and systems of appeal are in place to protect innocent people who get caught in the judicial system's often-clumsy, imperfect net, but that's meager comfort when you're a victim watching the criminals who terrorized you being given every consideration, while the department you served makes you the scapegoat in your partner's murder. It's a book that makes you want to hurl it across the room in frustration at the rank unfairness of it.

I also started The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. No one pings me as thoroughly unlikeable yet, but I'm only sixty pages in, and I suspect that Blomkvist might fit that bill soon, what, with his blithe justification of his adultery as something that was Meant to Be. You know, because of course a woman can love two men, and who is he to turn down "furious sex"? Oh, but a husband who lets his wife sleep with other men is unworthy of esteem, even though he's glad his part-time lover's husband understands that his wife needs Blomkvist's mighty cock, too. Ugh.