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Someone told me once that some aspect of law I was struggling with “was an artifact of the way funding was done.�� And oh my god, can that be leveraged by sociopaths.

The "Bezzle," I have learned from this book, refers to the time between a person being scammed and realizing they've been scammed. During that time, they feel like they're richer. They aren't -- the damage is done as soon as they've been scammed. But because of the play in the market theory of value, in some way they ARE richer -- a way they can realize if they pass that poisonous potato on -- right up until the moment they know it.

This is a book about bezzles. About short cons and long cons. Mostly about long cons. It suggests three strikes and your out was a long con done by the prison industrial complex, which might be true and is nauseating. About the ways sociopaths leverage value out of systems without adding any.

I also learned -which I'd managed to miss somehow -- that the Los Angeles Police Department had literal police gangs operating within it, one of which, the "Lynwood Vikings" used the tattoo "998." That's the code for the rage-inducing euphemism "officer involved shooting."

It's powerful and heartbreaking and hard to put down.