ATD 243-272

Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.

Page 246

Darby's exclamation: "with all the spaghetti-joints in this town to choose from, are you saying those dadblame Russians have come in here?" is reminiscent of a similar line from the film Casablanca: "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she had to walk into mine."

Page 269

the dirt, the blood-red dirt

This line recalls Homer's "wine-dark sea" first found in The Iliad (Bk VII) in a scene in which Achilles grieves for the death of Patroclus. Given the context here, it might be thought of as "mock-heroic."