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Friday, October 3, 2014

The Voice of the Crowds


At yesterday’s Mattoon Library book sale, I picked up a half-dozen hardcover novels, including Felice Picano’s “The Lure,” two by Simenon, a Hornblower omnibus, 1960s book club editions of “Casino Royale” and “Moonraker” and a pristine volume of my late friend Elleston Trevor’s 1970 World War I novel, “Bury Him Among Kings.”
That one was special to the British novelist among his many books, and I’ve always particularly liked his last, chilly paragraph: “She turned, pressed against him, and he tried to shut out of his mind the voice of the crowds; but it was insistent, surging among the buildings and rising to the dismal sky, where it lost all meaning. He’d heard this voice crying in joy for war; now it cried in joy for peace. It was a voice to beware of, wherever it was heard.”

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