A While Back This Seemed to Make Sense

A while back I read an article about the importance of first lines in novels so I started compiling and tagging all the first lines I came across (see here). I also created a compendium of last lines (here) and since I saw so many allusions to the morning I aggregated them (here) as well. I meant to make one for middle lines, but have yet to begin that work.

Nevertheless, I've come to the point where I don't know if last lines are worthwhile anymore. Here is the most recent.

“You know,” said Devereaux, as McBride reached the door, “if there’s one thing that thirty years in this agency has taught me, it’s this. There are some levels of loyalty that command us beyond even the call of duty.

Forsyth, Frederick - Avenger

But again, we have an epilogue here. That last line of the text is pretty good. In fact it could be among the best last lines I've collected (which really says more about the other last lines than about this one). Still, for some reason all I could think about as I read that antagonist's name, Devereaux, all I could think about was the Silver Streak movie.

McBride was still looking in the mirror, but he seemed to see two young GIs, rat-assed on beer and wine, laughing in the warm Saigon night, and a white Petromax lamp hissing, and a Chinese tattooist at work. Two young Americans who would part company but be bound by a bond that nothing could ever break. And he saw a slim file a few weeks earlier, which mentioned a tattoo of a grinning rat on the left forearm. And he heard the order to find the man and have him killed. 

He slipped his watch back on his wrist and flipped his sleeve back down. He checked the day-date window. September 10, 2001. 

“It’s quite a story, son,” said the Badger, “and it all happened long ago and far away.”

Forsyth, Frederick - Avenger

I know why he had to put it in . . . this is the O'Henry-esque twist at the end. But that first last line was so much better.