خندهٔ دیوها

Jean Paul Marin, the hero of Frank Yerbys new novel, is as turbulent and unpredictable, as strange a mixture of idealism and hatred, as the French Revolution itself, in the thick of which he lives and loves and pursues his feuds. Four years in the Comte de Gravereaus private prison have left a scar on his forehead and a deeper invisible one in his heart. Indeed the Comte is to be the baleful genius of Jeans life. Three women, so utterly different, are caught up in Jeans passionate career glamorous, tawny-haired, treacherous Lucienne; Nicole, the Comtes sister, delicate and blonde, whom Jean loves as much as he hates her brother, and Fleurette, more beautiful than eitherbeautiful with great calm and sweetness, but blind. Jean, the public figure who rode high on the tide of a revolution he was finally to regret, and became the intimate of Danton himself, and Jean, the private citizen, with his veerings between good and evil, is Mr. Yerbys masterpiece; fatally easy to love, hard to understand and harder still to forget. The Devils Laughter has all the romance and colour which Yerbys many admirers would expect from the author of the brilliantly successful A Woman Called Fancy and The Foxes of Harrow .