The L.A quartet is my absolute guilty pleasure. It's hard to even describe it as pleasure. It's full of racist, sexist, homophobic white men, abused women, and the absolute seediest topics. None of the protagonists are fully likeable.

In L.A. Confidential we have three police men we follow through the years from 51 to 58. Up and comer Ed Exley. Rich, privileged, too smart for his own good, cowardly. In order to pave his career, he snitches on fellow policemen who assaulted Mexican prisoners in jail. One of those policemen he snitches on is Bud White, who has a white knight complex saving women from abusive men, because his own father beat his mother to death. And then there's Trashcan Jack, who works narco, getting tips from a journalist at a gossip magazine and delivers photogenic goods. This ends after he's snitched on by Ed Exley, and he ends up in Ad Vice instead.

The three of them individually investigate a coffee shop shootout, which turns into this incredibly complex case of pornography, mob crime, serial murder, prostitution, you name it. It's gross. It's complex. It's fascinating, and I stayed up til 2 am reading like a madwoman.

It's tough to consider myself a feminist and still enjoy this utter cesspit of toxic masculinity. And yet I do.