We jump across the Atlantic to a modern noir, with a disillusioned alcoholic cop investigating the death of her beautiful and successful friend.  A comic novel light on jokes, with an emphasis on the meaninglessness of existence and the impossibility of happiness.  The podcast ponders whether a work that shows the police as bigoted, lawless and incompetent counts as "copaganda", where the phrase "the sense of an ending" comes from and what it means, and whether the ending is as bleak as it seems.

Content note: discussion of suicide and child sexual abuse.