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Short story #2 was faster paced, more action packed and less opaque then the typical Marlowe tale. Interestingly enough, it also makes it a bit less interesting.

Finished the first entry of this four story collection. It's features one of Chandler's bleakest ending paired with some of his strongest closing paragraphs.

The last 40 or so pages have sketched the brutality and absurdity of the conflict. Totally meaningless, but Echenoz moves you to tear with the personal tragedies.

"The dimensions of this town drained almost empty of its men thus seem to have expanded: other than women., Blanche sees only old fellows and kids, whose footsteps sound hollow on a stage too large for them."

Resisting the urge to read this entire book in a single day.

"The peasants' resistance infuriated the Bolsheviks , not least because it cofounded their historical determinism: the poor were supposed to support them, not fight against them...the Bolsheviks increased their brutality, sometimes demanding the murder of hundreds of peasants in exchange for one dead communist, calling for the entire adult male population of a village to be wiped out."