Friendship advice

Rico says that, whilst he and the ladyfriend were in Santa Fe recently, he noted two separate people at the pool reading different books in The Girl series; one (a young woman) was reading the first one, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and the other (a guy) was reading the second one, The Girl Who Played With Fire. (Rico advised them both, as he advises you, to see the Swedish version of the movie, not the American one.) Coming home, Rico discovered, quite by accident, a hardcopy version of the third book, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, which he's currently reading.

Rico recently said of the book, using a cultural metaphor that his German neighbor, Stefan, didn't understand, that you can't tell the players without a scorecard.
Let's just say that there are way too many characters, all with Swedish names, and every chapter has a new meeting of a whole different set of cops...

However, as Larson (the author) is wont to do, he has some splendid observations, and this is too good to pass up:

"She knew that he was loyal to the point of foolhardiness once had had made someone a friend, even if the friend was impossible and obviously flawed. She also knew that he could accept any number of idiocies from his friends, but that there was a boundary and it could not be overstepped. Where exactly this boundary was seemed to vary from one person to another, but she knew he had broken completely with people who had previously been close friends because they had done something that he regarded as beyond the pale. And he was inflexible. The break was forever.

Rico says that this applies perfectly to one of his oldest and (previously) dearest friends, who stepped (more than once) over the line, alas, and is dead to Rico now.