Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 63: Lines 148-149 (1130-1131)

 "Better than that, my apprentice ran off when the coppers showed up. How'd you like to learn the deepest secrets of the photographer's trade?"

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Not only was Roswell just rescued from Hell, it's possible he was actually a devil too? Here he's offering Merle a Faustian deal to learn the "deepest secrets" of his vocation. You don't offer somebody a job by offering to teach them not just deep secrets but the deepest secrets. This sounds like a deal with the devil more than an offer of apprenticeship.

We still haven't gotten to the point of the story (Merle falling in love with Erlys) but at least we've now gotten the secret origin of Merle becoming a photographer. And that's probably an important part of how he met Erlys being that we know Merle loves to photograph naked ladies. Wait. Is that the deepest secret of photography? Women will readily take their clothes off so you can take sexy pictures of them? The amount of naked women I've seen based on my writing that doesn't include taking breaks to look at image searches of weird Rule 34 stuff pales in comparison. Maybe I'll drop the writing and pick up a camera? Or re-pick up a camera since I still have that fancy camera that I bought for my cross-country VW bus roadtrip off  of an office cubicle installer when I was managing the Netscape Warehouse back in the '90s (which include a huge bag of funny mushrooms thrown in the case because he loved me so much!). Knowing my luck, I'm already 135 years too late for women casting their clothes aside simply because a man points a newfangled camera in front of them. Stupid me being born so late into the 20th Century!

Chapter 1: Section 5: Page 43: Line 205 (787)

 By the time he got that pleasantry all decoded, Lew found he was more than able to shrug it off.

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So Lew had to decode that shit too? That's good to hear. Hopefully he came to the same conclusion I did or else I'm off to a really bad start in trying to figure out this book. I suppose as long as I'm consistent in my artistic interpretation of the novel, it's valid! It might not be correct! But my critique still probably has something valid to say about the work.
    At least some of my critique does. Ninety percent of my critique is just plain stupidity and stories about some occasion when I was tripping on mushrooms.

"more than able to shrug it off"
This phrase leads me to believe that I was more or less correct that the statement was office place propaganda to inculcate in Lew a sense that Chicago was becoming increasing lawless and dangerous to the average person. And by the time Lew figured that's what they were trying to do, he was pretty much immune to it. That probably means he'd seen enough on his own, during investigations, to know it was bullshit. Which continues to match my Facebook analogy from the previous entry. If only our conservative friends and family could get outside their propaganda bubble, and actually venture forth into these communities that represent to them lawless anarchy, they'd experience for themselves how untruthful all of those Facebook posts truly are.