conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled The Colour Of Murder about York, Times with the genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A book to delight every puzzle-suspense enthusiast' ( New York Times )
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Colour Of Murder
  The Colour of Murder was one of the most acclaimed British crime novels of the 1950s. On publication, it received a rapturous reception from the critics, and it won the prize given by the Crime Writers' Association for the best crime novel of the year in 1957; then called the Crossed Red Herring prize, it is now known as the CWA Gold Dagger.
  Wilkins' world is recognisable to a twenty-first century reader, yet different from our own in innumerable ways, great and small. It's a world, for instance, of "television parties"; I hadn't even realised there ever were such things, but evidently for some people they formed part of 1950s social life. It's also a world where racist attitudes are commonplace, as is clear from the account of a murder committed by a Jamaican bus conductor. The bus conductor is sympathetically presented in the narrative; the relevance of the crime is that Wilkins takes an interest in it. Before long, he is asking his uncle how he'd go about it if he wanted to kill someone.
  Julian Gustave Symons was one of the most influential British crime novelists and critics of the twentieth century. Born in 1912, he was the youngest of seven children, the son of a Jewish immigrant whose real name he never discovered. He left school at fourteen, and in effect educated himself. He enjoyed writing poetry, and founded a magazine called Twentieth Century Verse, running it singlehandedly until the war came.
  He and a friend, Ruthven Todd (who later wrote a handful of detective stories as R.T. Campbell), planned a jokey murder mystery, which Symons wrote up. Six years later, in 1945, the story was published as The Immaterial Murder Case, but although it appeared as a green Penguin paperback, Symons later decided it should not be reprinted again. He became equally dissatisfied with his next two novels, but with The Narrowing Circle, he felt he'd made a breakthrough, in terms of character development and "saying something about the form and shape of society".
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I sat in a chair by the bedside, uncomfortably conscious of Sheila's sobs behind me. I remembered now that I had sometimes heard my father mention Morton, Morton the timber merchant, when I was small. Then his name had dropped out of conversation, and by the time I was seven or eight I never heard it.
  Sheila produced teeth from a cup and handed them to him. The old man fitted them in, giving a push of the thumb that produced a final click. "Better." Indeed, his voice did sound clearer and his face appeared buttressed by the teeth, as though a support had been added to an uncertain building. "Remember you well, little Jim."
  Doctor Burrows gave a deprecating cough. "I don't think there's anything further I can do usefully at the moment. I shall be in again to-morrow morning."
  The doctor tittered. "We are all going to die, Mr. Morton, all in our time. But you look after yourself, do what this young lady tells you, ten more minutes' talk at the most, don't try to get out of bed or any of that nonsense, avoid excitement, remember the ticker mustn't be strained. Now a word with you, my dear young lady."
  Sheila and Bill Lonergan followed him out of the room. The sick man moved uneasily. "Pillow's not comfortable." I changed its position, and as I did so my fingers touched his shoulders, thin as knives. "They think I'm dying, that doctor thinks I'm dying, and so does Sheila. Why else is young Bill here, come to pay his last respects to his old uncle, I've got nobody else. But I'm not dead yet."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Betty Prenton paid her visit to John Wilkins at the end of August. It was on a golden autumn evening at the end of September that Magnus Newton visited Doctor Max Andreadis, and they sat sipping sherry in the small paved garden of the psychiatrist's house in St. John's Wood.
  Doctor Andreadis smiled. "But under those rules of yours—did we not discuss them at our first meeting—"
  Andreadis sipped his sherry. "You have become hysterical about this case. I saw the seeds of it at Lewes."
  The sun melted below the rooftops in a mess of red and gold. "If I cannot convince you I shall convince nobody," Newton said. He stood, a head below Andreadis, and drained his whisky. "But you were not on that hillside, Doctor, you didn't hear that laugh as I did. I tell you I know now what that old man meant by saying it was a murderer's laugh. I know what he meant, I tell you, by saying that the laugh had in it the colour of murder."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Betty Prenton paid her visit to John Wilkins at the end of August. It was on a golden autumn evening at the end of September that Magnus Newton visited Doctor Max Andreadis, and they sat sipping sherry in the small paved garden of the psychiatrist's house in St. John's Wood.
  Doctor Andreadis smiled. "But under those rules of yours—did we not discuss them at our first meeting—"
  Andreadis sipped his sherry. "You have become hysterical about this case. I saw the seeds of it at Lewes."
  The sun melted below the rooftops in a mess of red and gold. "If I cannot convince you I shall convince nobody," Newton said. He stood, a head below Andreadis, and drained his whisky. "But you were not on that hillside, Doctor, you didn't hear that laugh as I did. I tell you I know now what that old man meant by saying it was a murderer's laugh. I know what he meant, I tell you, by saying that the laugh had in it the colour of murder.