Here's another poisonous book, a Norwegain detective story, Evas øye (Eva's Eye):

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The story is about a talented but dirt poor female artist, Eva, who runs into an old high school friend that she hasn't seen for twenty years who talks her into making money by prostituting herself. (Her high school friend is herself a prostitute.) To learn the tricks of the trade, Eva accompanies her friend to her apartment to watch how the business of selling one's body for money is carried out exactly. But as Eva is hidden in a closet, her friend is actually murdered by a customer.

Now the total brainlessness starts. (As if deciding to prostitute herself wasn't bad enough.) Eva isn't going to call the police, but instead she is going to track down the murderer and kill him herself. Okay, people, how likely is that? When did you last hear of a woman who killed a man, a total stranger, because she believed that he had killed an old high school friend of hers that she had just been reunited with after not seeing her for twenty years?

Come on, people. That sort of thing doesn't happen. It doesn't. Now if Eva's child had been murdered, then I would at least have bought the general premise of the story, the idea that Eva felt the need to track down the murderer and kill him herself. But to track down and kill a total stranger, all by herself at that, because he killed her old high school friend???

It gets worse. Eva tracks down the wrong man and kills the wrong man. The police capture Eva. The murdered man's circa ten-year-old son, who adored his father, is devastated. Eva's own young daugther is devastated. Eva's old father is so devastated that we are sure he will die of pure grief because of what Eva has done. The end.

Now wasn't that a great story?

Ann