conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled The High Window about Black, Lizard's, BR>Copyright with the genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Mystery? End with the sentence ' <BR>Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author is not only the best writer of hardboiled PI stories, he's one of the 20th century's top scribes, period. His full canon of novels and short stories is reprinted in trade paper featuring uniform covers in Black Lizard's signature style. A handsome set for a reasonable price. <BR>Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a plot for a book titled The High Window about Black, Lizard's, BR>Copyright with the genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Mystery?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The High Window: Private investigator Philip Marlowe is called to the house of wealthy widow Elizabeth Bright Murdock to recover a missing Brasher Doubloon, a rare and valuable coin.\nmrs Murdock suspects that it was stolen by her son\'s estranged wife, Linda Conquest, a former singer.\nOn his way back to his office, Marlowe is followed by a blond man in a coupe.\nmrs Murdock\'s son Leslie Murdock visits Marlowe and tries to learn why his mother hired him.\nMurdock lets slip that he owes nightclub owner Alex Morny a large sum of money.\nMarlowe learns that Linda Conquest had two friends: Lois Magic and a mr Vannier; Magic is now mrs Alex Morny.\nMarlowe visits mrs Morny at home and finds her with Vannier, who acts suspiciously.\nMarlowe is still tailed by the blond in the coupe and confronts him.\nHe is George Anson Phillips, an amateurish private detective, who is thinking of enlisting Marlowe\'s help on a case that is out of his league.\nMarlowe agrees to meet him at his apartment later.\nMarlowe visits a rare coin dealer, mr Morningstar, who confirms that someone tried to sell a Brasher Doubloon; Marlowe plans to buy it back the next day, and after leaving overhears the dealer trying to call Phillips.\nMarlowe keeps his appointment with Phillips but finds him dead; the police arrest the drunk next door for the murder, although he insists he is innocent.\nThe police give Marlowe an ultimatum to reveal all he knows.\nAt his office, Marlowe receives a package with no address that contains the coin.\nHe calls mrs Murdock and is floored when she says the coin has already been returned.\nMarlowe returns to the coin dealer and finds him dead also.\nThen Alex Morny\'s henchman calls and invites Marlowe to visit Morny at his nightclub.\nIt turns out that Linda Conquest is singing there.\nMorny demands to know why Marlowe visited his wife, but Marlowe is unfazed, and Morny realizes he is not Marlowe\'s quarry.\nMorny offers to hire Marlowe to find dirt on Vannier, giving him a suspicious receipt for dentistry chemicals that Vannier lost.\nMarlowe also talks to Linda and decides she is probably not involved in the theft.\nReturning to the Murdocks, Marlowe is told a story he doesn\'t believe: Leslie Murdock hocked the coin to Morny for his debts, then changed his mind and got it back.\nMarlowe leaves in disgust, but he begins to suspect a dark secret involving Merle, the timid family secretary, and mrs Murdock\'s first husband, Horace Bright, who was Leslie\'s father and who died falling out of a window.\nThe police say the drunk has confessed to the murder of Phillips, but Marlowe discovers he is covering for his landlord, a local leader who doesn\'t want the police snooping around because his fugitive brother is nearby.\nThe landlord is paying the drunk\'s legal bills in exchange for his taking the rap.\nMarlowe gets a call that Merle is at his apartment having a nervous breakdown; he rushes home and she claims to have shot Vannier, although her story doesn\'t hold water.\nMarlowe visits Vannier\'s home, finds him dead, and discovers a photo of a man falling from a window.\nMorny and Magic arrive, and Marlowe hides while Morny tricks his wife into leaving her fingerprints on the gun near the body.\nHe tells her he is sick of her and will force her to take the rap, but after they leave Marlowe puts the dead man\'s prints on the gun instead.\nMarlowe visits mrs Murdock again and reveals what he has figured out: Horace Bright once tried to force himself on Merle, and she either pushed him or allowed him to fall out of a window to his death.\nThe stress of it made her become detached from reality.\nVannier knew and was blackmailing the family.\nmrs Murdock coldly admits it is true and says she regrets ever having hired Marlowe to get the coin back.\nMarlowe makes it plain that the feeling is mutual.\nHe then speaks to Leslie Murdock and reveals what he knows about him: he and Vannier had a plot to duplicate the coin using dental technology.\nThey had Lois Magic hire a dimwitted private detective to sell the fakes.\nThe detective got scared of the assignment and mailed the coin to Marlowe.\nWhen Vannier learned Marlowe was on the case, he killed the detective and the dealer to cover his tracks.\nHe threatened to ruin Leslie if their scheme ever got out, so Leslie killed him.\nLeslie confirms it, but Marlowe says it is not his business to turn him in and leaves.\nMarlowe tells Merle he knows it was mrs Murdock who pushed her husband out of the window and then blamed Merle for it.\nThe police discover Vannier\'s role in the counterfeiting plot and his murders of Phillips and the coin dealer, but they rule Vannier\'s death a suicide.\nMarlowe\'s last act in the novel is to remove Merle from the toxic environment of mrs Murdock\'s employment.\nHe drives her cross country, away from Los Angeles, to the home of her parents.\nHe watches her and her family on the porch as he drives away and says, "I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again".