the late 1980’s in Southern California. Selma Newquist, a run-down widow, hired a private investigator named Kinsey Millhone to find out the reasons behind the sudden death of her late husband Tom. Selma felt that something had been eating away at Tom right before his death, and she was nosey to find out what exactly it was so she could be at rest with herself. Tom Newquist was a very well respected sheriff within the community of Nota Lake, so Kinsey was unable to find any sort of negative information about him that might have been important. Finally, Kinsey gets a lead from Tom’s old desk blotter. The numbers 2-18-1-14-20 were written in the bottom, left corner of the desk pad. Kinsey is puzzled at the significance of these numbers but moves on figuring they as useless as the other doodles consisting of stickfigures and abnormal shapes. One thing leads to another and Kinsey gets hold of Tom’s blackbook. She discovers the case that he was working on shortly before this death was one from years ago in which two people were killed in the same manner; both hung by a noose. Kinsey is soon brought back to the code on Tom’s desk. She is relentlessly trying different codes, matching up letters to numbers, and discovers the code spells out B-R-A-N-T; Selma and Tom’s son. The numbers in the code also match up to the dates in which the two men were hung. Kinsey is startled by the discovery that Tom’s own son was the killer and shortly after, Brant came home. Kinsey heard him loading a gun and soon as he appeared at the door, she shot him down, before he could kill anyone else. Selma returned that evening to find out that her son was now also dead and had to live in more conflict within herself than ever before.Conflict is a major element in literary works that a lot of the time is the high point of the plot. In both “The Fifth Child” and “’N’ is for Noose”, t...
