Philip Marlowe was born in Santa Rosa, California, in that time out of time that allowed him to be 33 in 1933, 42 in 1953, and 43 1/2 in 1958. In many ways he was the very model of a perfect private investigator: a college graduate, 6 ft. 1/2 in. Tall and 199 Ib., with brown eyes and brown hair going gray, He liked liquor, women, and working alone. His independent detective agency was a shoestring operation which he ran from a pair of musty, scantily furnished rooms on the sixth floor of the Cahuenga Building in downtown Los Angeles. He was once employed as an investigator by Taggart Wilde, district attorney of Los Angeles, but was fired for insubordination