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Lew Archer #9
Die wahre Mrs. Wycherly
Phoebe Wycherly was missing two months before her wealthy father hired Archer to find her. That was plenty of time for a young girl who wanted to disappear to do so thoroughly--or for someone to make her disappear. And before he could locate the Wycherly girl, Archer had to reckon with the Wycherly woman, Phoebe's mother, an eerily unmaternal blonde who kept too many residences, had too many secrets, and left too many corpses in her wake.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
46 people are currently reading
678 people want to read
About the author
Ross Macdonald
160 books802 followersRoss Macdonald is the pseudonym of the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar. He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer.
Millar was born in Los Gatos, California, and raised in his parents' native Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, where he started college. When his father abandoned his family unexpectedly, Macdonald lived with his mother and various relatives, moving several times by his sixteenth year. The prominence of broken homes and domestic problems in his fiction has its roots in his youth.
In Canada, he met and married Margaret Sturm (Margaret Millar)in 1938. They had a daughter, Linda, who died in 1970.
He began his career writing stories for pulp magazines. Millar attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and a Ph.D. in literature. While doing graduate study, he completed his first novel, The Dark Tunnel, in 1944. At this time, he wrote under the name John Macdonald, in order to avoid confusion with his wife, who was achieving her own success writing as Margaret Millar. He then changed briefly to John Ross Macdonald before settling on Ross Macdonald, in order to avoid mixups with contemporary John D. MacDonald. After serving at sea as a naval communications officer from 1944 to 1946, he returned to Michigan, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree.
Macdonald's popular detective Lew Archer derives his name from Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, and from Lew Wallace, author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Macdonald first introduced the tough but humane private eye in the 1946 short story Find the Woman. A full-length novel, The Moving Target, followed in 1949. This novel (the first in a series of eighteen) would become the basis for the 1966 Paul Newman film Harper. In the early 1950s, he returned to California, settling for some thirty years in Santa Barbara, the area where most of his books were set. The very successful Lew Archer series, including bestsellers The Goodbye Look, The Underground Man, and Sleeping Beauty, concluded with The Blue Hammer in 1976.
Macdonald died of Alzheimer's disease in Santa Barbara, California.
Macdonald is the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries. His writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters. Macdonald's plots were complicated, and often turned on Archer's unearthing family secrets of his clients and of the criminals who victimized them. Lost or wayward sons and daughters were a theme common to many of the novels. Macdonald deftly combined the two sides of the mystery genre, the "whodunit" and the psychological thriller. Even his regular readers seldom saw a Macdonald denouement coming.
Millar was born in Los Gatos, California, and raised in his parents' native Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, where he started college. When his father abandoned his family unexpectedly, Macdonald lived with his mother and various relatives, moving several times by his sixteenth year. The prominence of broken homes and domestic problems in his fiction has its roots in his youth.
In Canada, he met and married Margaret Sturm (Margaret Millar)in 1938. They had a daughter, Linda, who died in 1970.
He began his career writing stories for pulp magazines. Millar attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and a Ph.D. in literature. While doing graduate study, he completed his first novel, The Dark Tunnel, in 1944. At this time, he wrote under the name John Macdonald, in order to avoid confusion with his wife, who was achieving her own success writing as Margaret Millar. He then changed briefly to John Ross Macdonald before settling on Ross Macdonald, in order to avoid mixups with contemporary John D. MacDonald. After serving at sea as a naval communications officer from 1944 to 1946, he returned to Michigan, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree.
Macdonald's popular detective Lew Archer derives his name from Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, and from Lew Wallace, author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Macdonald first introduced the tough but humane private eye in the 1946 short story Find the Woman. A full-length novel, The Moving Target, followed in 1949. This novel (the first in a series of eighteen) would become the basis for the 1966 Paul Newman film Harper. In the early 1950s, he returned to California, settling for some thirty years in Santa Barbara, the area where most of his books were set. The very successful Lew Archer series, including bestsellers The Goodbye Look, The Underground Man, and Sleeping Beauty, concluded with The Blue Hammer in 1976.
Macdonald died of Alzheimer's disease in Santa Barbara, California.
Macdonald is the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries. His writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into the motivations of his characters. Macdonald's plots were complicated, and often turned on Archer's unearthing family secrets of his clients and of the criminals who victimized them. Lost or wayward sons and daughters were a theme common to many of the novels. Macdonald deftly combined the two sides of the mystery genre, the "whodunit" and the psychological thriller. Even his regular readers seldom saw a Macdonald denouement coming.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 150 reviews
February 1, 2020
As usual, in MacDonald, guilt reaches across the generations to pollute the lives of a Southern California family, in particular wounding and confounding the young. This time, a "wandering daughter job" is the occasion for uncovering the rot and pain within.
As is usual in Archer's world, things are not what they seem, and people are even less so. In Attic tragedy, the character reveals his fate through a mask, but here the detective must strip the mask off, revealing the tragic face beneath.
The Wycherly Woman, written at the height of MacDonald's powers, is as moving and almost as flawless as The Galton Case. Those who know something of the authors biography, of the sad life and sudden death of his daughter, his only child, will find much in this book that is personal and poignant.
A worthy entry in the series.
June 8, 2023
03/2022
From 1961
I never read or even came close to this book before. I believe I judged it by the cover of the Vintage paperback shown here. Which I still don't like, and is not a good illustration of this novel. And now I can say that the book is utterly better than this cheesy photo. A classic Lew Archer mystery, at the end complicated yet simple. Lew doesn't get beat up and tortured as much as he often and unpleasantly does. In this he just gets knocked out once with a tire iron.
From 1961
I never read or even came close to this book before. I believe I judged it by the cover of the Vintage paperback shown here. Which I still don't like, and is not a good illustration of this novel. And now I can say that the book is utterly better than this cheesy photo. A classic Lew Archer mystery, at the end complicated yet simple. Lew doesn't get beat up and tortured as much as he often and unpleasantly does. In this he just gets knocked out once with a tire iron.
November 26, 2019
Archer is hired by a wealthy older man to find his missing daughter, Phoebe, a senior recently transferred from Stanford to Boulder Beach college (she's apparently fallen in love with a surfer there). Old man Wycherly is not an easy client to deal with. He's recently divorced his wife, the missing daughter's mother, after receiving a series of letters accusing the wife of committing adultery. Oh the shame!. He refuses to share the poison-pen letters the family received with Archer. He refuses to grant permission for Archer to consult another private investigator about facts he may or may not have uncovered about the former-Mrs. Wycherly. He also forbids Archer from contacting his ex-wife about the missing daughter.
Old man Wycherly is a difficult person to deal with about anything. He argues with his wife over alimony. He refuses to allow his wife to visit their daughter or to return to the premises to retrieve personal items. The previous investigator hired by Wycherly relates to Archer (Archer ignores the old man's demands) how tight the old man was with information necessary for him to successfully conduct his own, unrelated investigation.
Archer pays a visit to Wycherly's sister's and brother-in-law's home after learning that the missing daughter was particularly fond of her uncle, the aunt not so much.
Archer interviews the uncle about the missing girl. He's a frail man still recovering from a heart attack two years earlier and Archer's usual world weariness is on parade.
The pacing of this novel quickens after about thirty pages and the bodies begin to pile up. The missing daughter is impossible to find and Archer has to navigate a maze of lies and moral corruption but nothing prepares the reader for the final twists and the sudden, startling end.
Old man Wycherly is a difficult person to deal with about anything. He argues with his wife over alimony. He refuses to allow his wife to visit their daughter or to return to the premises to retrieve personal items. The previous investigator hired by Wycherly relates to Archer (Archer ignores the old man's demands) how tight the old man was with information necessary for him to successfully conduct his own, unrelated investigation.
Archer pays a visit to Wycherly's sister's and brother-in-law's home after learning that the missing daughter was particularly fond of her uncle, the aunt not so much.
She had on pearls and a simple dark gown which had probably cost a fortune. A wasted fortune. It accentuated the taut angularity of her body and left her frying chicken shoulders bare.
Archer interviews the uncle about the missing girl. He's a frail man still recovering from a heart attack two years earlier and Archer's usual world weariness is on parade.
"But the real question is, what are we going to do about it?"
"Find her."
"If she's alive."
"They usually are," I said with more assurance than I felt.
"They turn up counting change in Vegas, or waiting table in the Tenderloin, or setting up light housekeeping in a beat pad, or bucking the modelling racket in Hollywood."
Trevor's thick eyebrows came together and tangled like hostile caterpillars. "Why would a well-nurtured girl like Phoebe do any of those things?"
"The standard motives are drink or drugs or a man. They all add up the same idea, rebellion. It's the fourth R they learn in school these days. Or someplace."
The pacing of this novel quickens after about thirty pages and the bodies begin to pile up. The missing daughter is impossible to find and Archer has to navigate a maze of lies and moral corruption but nothing prepares the reader for the final twists and the sudden, startling end.
December 12, 2023
The Wycheryl Woman (1961) by Ross MacDonald is a pretty good Lew Archer case and a worthy entry tucked in between The Galton Case and The Zebra-Striped Hearse. There are some really good reviews outlining the plot of TWW, better than I could write so I suggest you search those out if you need to know the plot-line ahead of your read...Only drawback I had with TWW is (minor spoiler ahead) the daughter being recognized as her mother...But, to make up for that the final paragraph is stunning piece of writing by Ross MacDonald......4.0 outta 5.0...
October 28, 2014
Given the option I would just as well have read the condensed version of this novel that, according to the tiny print on the publisher’s page in my early 70's mass market paperback copy, appeared in Cosmopolitan in I presume the early sixties. Given the extreme period feel of the novel reading it in an old fashion mag would’ve intensified the experience, while at the same time shortening my reading time thus allowing me to move on to a book (To the Lighthouse) I’m much more excited about waking up to. In the three short days I read it, The Wycherly Woman became a book I consumed during fugitive moments, moments when I'd never read (or even be capable of reading) To the Lighthouse, moments when all my attention wasn’t required, or even possible, as while my daughter sat on my head and I had to look past her diaper (while part of my mind wandered into speculations of what it would feel like to have her diapered butt pressed into my scalp during the excretion process). It is one of those books that is so plot driven it almost drives itself, requiring very little effort from the reader. Yes, there are Chandler touches here and there, given that Chandler is clearly Macdonald’s master, but the prose itself, apart from the well-constructed plot, was slack and lazy, and padded to boot (hence the Cosmo condensed version). Yes, the cast of characters is colorful and well-delineated, and so intertwined as to resemble characters in a Greek tragedy on a tiny stage, but the book never quite comes to fruition; all its various elements (tragedy, identity-switching, 60’s touches of quacky beliefs, etc.) never synthesize into a completely successful and satisfying novel, of which I know Macdonald is capable having read two of his later novels some years ago. What I did find interesting, though again not totally, was his use of real estate – its value, its location, its primacy, its tendency to be the framework of reality – as a major tool of implicit explanation of character and plot, as he traveled from downtown Sacramento seedy hotels to early McMansions on the peninsula south of San Francisco. I also found the “About the Author” entry on the final page interesting, where even Mr. Macdonald’s hobbies are included, which seemed a quaint addition. One of his hobbies particularly intrigued me – “all-year swimming” – what exactly is that?
July 11, 2024
The Wycherly Woman (1961) has Lew Archer working for another difficult client, one who wants him to essentially investigate with both hands tied behind his back. Eccentric oil millionaire Homer Wycherly went through a difficult divorce with a wife (Catherine) who he believed had been cheating. With daughter Phoebe away at college, Homer embarked on a two-week trip around the world, only to come back and find that his daughter has been missing for two months and no one cared enough to look for her. Homer does not want any negative publicity and forbids Archer from going to the press or the local police and does not want Archer, under any circumstances, to contact Catherine. In fact, he refuses to even give Archer contact information for Catherine. When Archer suggests hiring a larger detective firm to search, Homer forbids it.
Reluctantly, Archer takes on the case, first taking Homer with him to Boulder College on the California coast, a made up name which could be a reference and a stand-in for Cal State San Luis Obispo which is perched near the giant boulder that crowns Morro Bay. In any case, it appears Phoebe has transferred there from Stanford, perhaps chasing after a young man she met over the summer. But she’s not there. And neither her roommate (Dolly) nor the landlady nor her surfer son seem to have any clue where Phoebe disappeared to in her green Volkswagen.
Despite warnings to stay away from Catherine, Archer finds that, after seeing Homer off on his world wide voyage, Phoebe left with her mother, who was so overwrought and scene-causing that she had to be escorted off the ship. From there, despite his employer’s explicit warnings, Archer begins picking his way through a trail which leads to a dirty underbelly and suspicious characters, many of whom seem to end up terminal in his wake. The trial though seems to have ended two weeks after Homer’s voyage began and Archer is pessimistic about results.
MacDonald turns out a brilliant-worked detective novel and all the shifting pieces of the puzzle come together by the end of the book though at points along the way they appear to not make much sense. Although the action takes place fully across California, MacDonald gives us readers a crushing claustrophobic atmosphere almost from the start with Archer’s visit to the Wycherly home and its “closed musty atmosphere of a Victorian parlor” and Homer’s violent jerking of the drapes, “Like a man hanging a cat.” That’s tension right there. The book is dark and foreboding and filled with strangling guilt and family secrets.
There are also a few interesting lines throughout where Archer says he serves justice, but can’t explain what that is in a few words and other lines where he says life killed someone.
For a private eye novel of this type, the plotting and the pace is straight-on perfectly set. MacDonald is so much a professional writer and knew had to keep the reader interested and the tension pulled just tightly enough.
Reluctantly, Archer takes on the case, first taking Homer with him to Boulder College on the California coast, a made up name which could be a reference and a stand-in for Cal State San Luis Obispo which is perched near the giant boulder that crowns Morro Bay. In any case, it appears Phoebe has transferred there from Stanford, perhaps chasing after a young man she met over the summer. But she’s not there. And neither her roommate (Dolly) nor the landlady nor her surfer son seem to have any clue where Phoebe disappeared to in her green Volkswagen.
Despite warnings to stay away from Catherine, Archer finds that, after seeing Homer off on his world wide voyage, Phoebe left with her mother, who was so overwrought and scene-causing that she had to be escorted off the ship. From there, despite his employer’s explicit warnings, Archer begins picking his way through a trail which leads to a dirty underbelly and suspicious characters, many of whom seem to end up terminal in his wake. The trial though seems to have ended two weeks after Homer’s voyage began and Archer is pessimistic about results.
MacDonald turns out a brilliant-worked detective novel and all the shifting pieces of the puzzle come together by the end of the book though at points along the way they appear to not make much sense. Although the action takes place fully across California, MacDonald gives us readers a crushing claustrophobic atmosphere almost from the start with Archer’s visit to the Wycherly home and its “closed musty atmosphere of a Victorian parlor” and Homer’s violent jerking of the drapes, “Like a man hanging a cat.” That’s tension right there. The book is dark and foreboding and filled with strangling guilt and family secrets.
There are also a few interesting lines throughout where Archer says he serves justice, but can’t explain what that is in a few words and other lines where he says life killed someone.
For a private eye novel of this type, the plotting and the pace is straight-on perfectly set. MacDonald is so much a professional writer and knew had to keep the reader interested and the tension pulled just tightly enough.
August 13, 2011
Wow. Ross Macdonald could write. I can't believe that I never picked up one of his books before, but apparently that is the case. I'm pretty sure I jumped into the middle of Lew Archer's life/career with this book, but that doesn't matter. Time to look for more of the same!
Tightly-woven plot, detailed stares (not mere glimpses) into the depths of the characters - not once, but twice of three times with the same character even if they were just a minor entity, precise and colorful descriptions; the man wrote very, very well. It's not Raymond Chandler, although they share some traits and it's not Dashiell Hammett, although some of the terseness of the prose is evocative of the "Continental Op" stories.
In many ways this book surpasses both of those (to me) great writers. It is an American "noir" detective story, but it draws on so many additional sources than the usual hard-boiled private eye escapade. Macdonald weaves complex motivations, thoughts and actions into each of his characters. They are never cookie-cutter stand-ins to enable a plot turn. If a mother claims her child is "Snow White" then after the third or forth interaction (and after seeing said offspring in one or two of their own slices of the book) we get the admission that perhaps there is a bit of the Evil Queen (or maybe the Woodsman from Little Red Riding Hood) in their sainted child.
Like those he inherited the genre from, there is little or no slack in this book. The characters and plot are always in motion. What little "down time" there is advances the story in its own careful way. Can you guess the culprit before the author reveals them? Who cares! The thrill is in reading the story, not looking for weaknesses or outguessing the author. This is a book to be savored while you read it - even if you read it quickly, as did I, to match the pace of the story.
If your or I never read another story by Ross Macdonald we will be poorer for it, but at least we will always have "The Wycherly Woman". I'm looking forward to reading more. If you choose to start at the beginning, I won't object, but read something by this man. You will be happy you did.
Tightly-woven plot, detailed stares (not mere glimpses) into the depths of the characters - not once, but twice of three times with the same character even if they were just a minor entity, precise and colorful descriptions; the man wrote very, very well. It's not Raymond Chandler, although they share some traits and it's not Dashiell Hammett, although some of the terseness of the prose is evocative of the "Continental Op" stories.
In many ways this book surpasses both of those (to me) great writers. It is an American "noir" detective story, but it draws on so many additional sources than the usual hard-boiled private eye escapade. Macdonald weaves complex motivations, thoughts and actions into each of his characters. They are never cookie-cutter stand-ins to enable a plot turn. If a mother claims her child is "Snow White" then after the third or forth interaction (and after seeing said offspring in one or two of their own slices of the book) we get the admission that perhaps there is a bit of the Evil Queen (or maybe the Woodsman from Little Red Riding Hood) in their sainted child.
Like those he inherited the genre from, there is little or no slack in this book. The characters and plot are always in motion. What little "down time" there is advances the story in its own careful way. Can you guess the culprit before the author reveals them? Who cares! The thrill is in reading the story, not looking for weaknesses or outguessing the author. This is a book to be savored while you read it - even if you read it quickly, as did I, to match the pace of the story.
If your or I never read another story by Ross Macdonald we will be poorer for it, but at least we will always have "The Wycherly Woman". I'm looking forward to reading more. If you choose to start at the beginning, I won't object, but read something by this man. You will be happy you did.
February 22, 2017
Two thirds of the way through ‘The Wycherly Woman’, Archer has an exchange in which he’s told “We’re all victims, Mr Archer”. And that’s really what this volume of Archer’s adventures feels like – every single character in it is a victim, not just the poor souls who are dead. It’s a tale of dysfunctional people doing damaging things to each other, like an upscale ‘Jeremy Kyle Show’, just with much more murder.
In most detective fiction there are generally characters who walk away at the end seemingly able to get on with their lives. (In Christie there are characters who actually walk away winners, because the murder has allowed them to realise who their true love is, or some such thing). ‘The Wycherly Woman’ feels as if it has no survivors, as if everybody involved is going to be horribly scared no matter how incidental their presence. Perhaps there’s an element of this to all Archer mysteries. After all, with MacDonald’s interest in psychology, Archer sometimes feels like a particularly hands-on therapist, who only springs into action when a murder happens. This one though has Archer going from witness to potential witness picking up the pieces (and sometimes not doing a good job of that), with nearly every single person he meets already near the bottom of a downward spiral.
Archer is hired by a rich, difficult man to find the daughter who disappeared over two months’ before, under the strict proviso not contact the girl’s mother, despite all evidence pointed to the girl being with her mother the last time she was seen. As Archer novels go, this isn’t the easiest of reads as it is so damned bleak, but it was hard not to appreciate the poetry of the prose or the sheer cleverness of the mystery, even if it left me a bit cold.
In most detective fiction there are generally characters who walk away at the end seemingly able to get on with their lives. (In Christie there are characters who actually walk away winners, because the murder has allowed them to realise who their true love is, or some such thing). ‘The Wycherly Woman’ feels as if it has no survivors, as if everybody involved is going to be horribly scared no matter how incidental their presence. Perhaps there’s an element of this to all Archer mysteries. After all, with MacDonald’s interest in psychology, Archer sometimes feels like a particularly hands-on therapist, who only springs into action when a murder happens. This one though has Archer going from witness to potential witness picking up the pieces (and sometimes not doing a good job of that), with nearly every single person he meets already near the bottom of a downward spiral.
Archer is hired by a rich, difficult man to find the daughter who disappeared over two months’ before, under the strict proviso not contact the girl’s mother, despite all evidence pointed to the girl being with her mother the last time she was seen. As Archer novels go, this isn’t the easiest of reads as it is so damned bleak, but it was hard not to appreciate the poetry of the prose or the sheer cleverness of the mystery, even if it left me a bit cold.
March 23, 2016
Another young person is missing. Another ruined childhood. Another twisting turning plot. Another excellent book from Ross MacDonald.
What else is there to say?
What else is there to say?
February 9, 2015
"She placed one hand on her breast. Her fingers were pale and speckled like breakfast sausages. All of her flesh was lardlike: if you poked it the hole would stay. Some of it had run like candle wax down her ankles and over her shoes."
Ross MacDonald (Kenneth Millar) didn't write easy novels. I've yet to read a Lew Archer book whose plot could be described in just a few short sentences. It's like trying to tell someone the plot of Inland Empire. This novel, from 1961, about mid-point in the series, proves no different.
MacDonald is often compared to Raymond Chandler (who isn't?) and Dashiell Hammett, but outside of California as a setting their novels, there really is no comparison. MacDonald's books, especially from the late 50s on, are much deeper and better structured. The decay of the family through past sins is the common theme of the novels, and this one is no exception. Bad guys and murder are only side ingredients to the inevitable fall of innocence through hubris, corruption and sin.
Ross MacDonald (Kenneth Millar) didn't write easy novels. I've yet to read a Lew Archer book whose plot could be described in just a few short sentences. It's like trying to tell someone the plot of Inland Empire. This novel, from 1961, about mid-point in the series, proves no different.
MacDonald is often compared to Raymond Chandler (who isn't?) and Dashiell Hammett, but outside of California as a setting their novels, there really is no comparison. MacDonald's books, especially from the late 50s on, are much deeper and better structured. The decay of the family through past sins is the common theme of the novels, and this one is no exception. Bad guys and murder are only side ingredients to the inevitable fall of innocence through hubris, corruption and sin.
July 1, 2019
COUNTDOWN: Mid-20th Century North American Crime
BOOK 138 (of 250)
HOOK=3 stars: The book opens with a description of California and we move, by page 3, to discover a wealthy man's daughter is missing. A standard opening.
PACE=2: This was a chapter-by-chapter, disjointed, 5-day read and it seemed to me the author couldn't find his specific direction.
PLOT=3: Phoebe Wycherly is missing. Her father, Homer Wycherly, doesn't want the cops involved, so he hires Lew Archer to find his daughter. Homer has recently had a nasty divorce with his ex, Catherine. Catherine buys a house from a dirty real estate agent and oddly moves into a hotel and puts the house up for sell. Real estate stories set in California are a dime a dozen. This plot is just okay in spots, but I kept losing interest, and half way through I became completely confused. But Macdonald wraps everything up nicely.
CHARACTERS=4: Catherine Wycherly is an alcoholic, insane mess. Phoebe is an unknown presence: Macdonald leaves it up to the reader to decide which Wycherly is the titular one. And what does Phoebe's college roommate know? Bobby, Phoebe's boyfriend, may be involved in her disappearance. Lew Archer is a great addition, using his brains and brawn to resolve it all. A very good cast.
ATMOSPHERE/PLACE=4:"Coming over the pass you can see the whole valley below," opens the book. Later, "...the steady pumps at their bases nod their heads like clockwork animals" is a very good description of oil derricks, which are all over Southern California. A 4th star for getting all the hills and valley and derricks just right (I've lived in Los Angeles.)
SUMMARY: My overall rating is 3.2. This, for me, is a rather weak offering by this author. But for me, a 3 star rating means I liked it, therefore that's really a good rating.
BOOK 138 (of 250)
HOOK=3 stars: The book opens with a description of California and we move, by page 3, to discover a wealthy man's daughter is missing. A standard opening.
PACE=2: This was a chapter-by-chapter, disjointed, 5-day read and it seemed to me the author couldn't find his specific direction.
PLOT=3: Phoebe Wycherly is missing. Her father, Homer Wycherly, doesn't want the cops involved, so he hires Lew Archer to find his daughter. Homer has recently had a nasty divorce with his ex, Catherine. Catherine buys a house from a dirty real estate agent and oddly moves into a hotel and puts the house up for sell. Real estate stories set in California are a dime a dozen. This plot is just okay in spots, but I kept losing interest, and half way through I became completely confused. But Macdonald wraps everything up nicely.
CHARACTERS=4: Catherine Wycherly is an alcoholic, insane mess. Phoebe is an unknown presence: Macdonald leaves it up to the reader to decide which Wycherly is the titular one. And what does Phoebe's college roommate know? Bobby, Phoebe's boyfriend, may be involved in her disappearance. Lew Archer is a great addition, using his brains and brawn to resolve it all. A very good cast.
ATMOSPHERE/PLACE=4:"Coming over the pass you can see the whole valley below," opens the book. Later, "...the steady pumps at their bases nod their heads like clockwork animals" is a very good description of oil derricks, which are all over Southern California. A 4th star for getting all the hills and valley and derricks just right (I've lived in Los Angeles.)
SUMMARY: My overall rating is 3.2. This, for me, is a rather weak offering by this author. But for me, a 3 star rating means I liked it, therefore that's really a good rating.
August 23, 2017
Disappointing. The subject matter is definitely prime Lew Archer territory--lots of family intrigue and revenge and guilt out of the past. But the construction of the book puts all of the action early in the book, and there are four (!) very static scenes at the end that tie and retie all the loose ends of the plot. Not bad, but I think it would've benefited from a rewrite. Read The Chill instead.
January 8, 2013
"She was trouble looking for somebody to happen to."
This book has a detective and some hard-drinkng dames and a rich dude with a problem and some dead bodies and some nice lines-- so, it was exactly what I wanted it to be when I picked it up. It did stretch the old "suspension of disbelief" at the end there, but I'll get over it.
This book has a detective and some hard-drinkng dames and a rich dude with a problem and some dead bodies and some nice lines-- so, it was exactly what I wanted it to be when I picked it up. It did stretch the old "suspension of disbelief" at the end there, but I'll get over it.
February 12, 2017
Well done & convoluted plot; not too gritty. One of the best Lew Archer books I have read so far!
June 1, 2017
Una novela negra auténtica.
August 21, 2025
Ross Macdonald'd Archer series are up there with Chandler's Marlow and Hammett's Spade. Gritty noir, with smart dialogue and plotting. In this Lew Archer is called in to hunt for a missing young woman whose father doesn't want any police involvement. Twists until the final pages.
June 2, 2015
“She was trouble looking for somebody to happen to.”
A classic detective noir set up: The daughter of a rich man is missing. Lew Archer is hired to track her down. Archer is given all sorts of personal family areas he's not supposed to investigate. Just find the girl. I think we all know he's going to investigate those areas and I think we all know that nobody is going to like what he finds there.
I don't know what I found so entrancing about this book. Ross Macdonald was truly at the top of this craft when he wrote it. It's not that he does anything outrageous or even particularly unique here. This sort of "find the girl" story has been told a million times. It's just that Ross Macdonald may just have been one of the best one's who ever told it. It's like John Ford doing Westerns. Watching a master craftsman at the top of this craft is a pure literary joy.
So much of high class "literature" could learn a great deal from the mixture of harshness and delicacy in which Macdonald treats his characters. Fantastic art can still be fun. Macdonald proved it.
A classic detective noir set up: The daughter of a rich man is missing. Lew Archer is hired to track her down. Archer is given all sorts of personal family areas he's not supposed to investigate. Just find the girl. I think we all know he's going to investigate those areas and I think we all know that nobody is going to like what he finds there.
I don't know what I found so entrancing about this book. Ross Macdonald was truly at the top of this craft when he wrote it. It's not that he does anything outrageous or even particularly unique here. This sort of "find the girl" story has been told a million times. It's just that Ross Macdonald may just have been one of the best one's who ever told it. It's like John Ford doing Westerns. Watching a master craftsman at the top of this craft is a pure literary joy.
So much of high class "literature" could learn a great deal from the mixture of harshness and delicacy in which Macdonald treats his characters. Fantastic art can still be fun. Macdonald proved it.
April 15, 2021
review of
Ross MacDonald's The Wycherly Woman
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 14, 2021
Ok, anyone out there in the great beyond (beyond my house) who reads my reviews knows that I'm on a Ross MacDonald kick. Instead of reading deep intellectual works I'm wasting my life away enjoying these turbulent tales. There are worse ways to spend my life. I cd be taking prozac & watching TV (shudder). I hardly took any reviewer notes about this one wch make my life easier. As I sit here while the buzzards sit right outside my window looking hungrily at me, as my whole life melts like a candle burning at both ends & on the sides too, I bravely try to write something funny enuf to make you LTY (Laugh To Yourself). If I fail, I'll never meet you & hear yr complaints. The darkness will soon be defeated.
"Sunlight poured in, migrating across the room to a small picture on the wall above the marble fireplace. Composed of blobs and splashes of raw color, it was one of those paintings which are either very advanced or very backward. I never can tell which. Wycherly looked at the painting as if it was a Rorschach test, and he had failed it.
""Some of my wife's work." He added to himself, "I'm going to have it taken down."" - p 3
Archer gets a job as art critic for the Baltimore Sun & proceeds to make the lives of local artists even more financially disastrous than they already were.
I've noted before & I'll note again that MacDonald uses more 'poetic' description in paragraphs that begin chapters. In this case, chapter 2:
"Boulder Beach College stood on the edge of the resort town that gave it its name, in a green belt between some housing tracts and the intractable sea. It was one of those sudden institutions of learning that had been springing up all over California to handle the products of the wartime population explosion. Its buildings were stone and glass, so geometric and so spanking new that they hadn't begun to merge with the landscape. The palms and other plantings around them appeared artificial; they fluttered like ladies' fans in the fresh breeze from the sea." - p 13
MacDonald's novels are chock-fulla-nuts, characters that meet psychological profiles.. in this case manic-depressive:
""In what way was she an odd-ball?"
""That's hard for me to say. Psych is not my line. I mean, Phee had two or three personalities, one of them was a poisonality. She could be black, and frankly I'm not so highly integrated, either. So we sort of matched up."
""Was she depressed?"
""Sometimes. She'd get so depressed she could hardly crawl around. Then other times she was the life of the party."" - p 24
"She was a thirtyish blonde in an imitation mink coat which had seen better days. So had she. One of those blondes who ripened early like California fruit, hung in full teen-age maturity for a few sweet months or years, then fell into the first high reaching hand. The memory of the sweet days stayed in them and fermented." - p 65
The "imitation mink coat" had "seen better days" when it was still the hide of that imitation mink. That's what you get for being such a talented chameleon. Or at least that's what the newspaper art critic sd. But let's revel in the glory of more literate types:
""How old are you?"
""I never tell my age. On account of I'm a hundred. Like Lord Byron when he was thirty-five or so and he was asked his age when he registered at some hotel. I think it was in Italy. He told them he was a hundred. I know how he felt. He died the following year at Missolonghi. Lovely story, isn't it, with a happy ending and all. You like my story?"
""It's a load of laughs."
""I have a million of them. Morbid tales for little people by the old lady of the sea. I think of myself as the old lady of the sea." Her mouth twisted. "I'm spooky, aren't I?"" - p 93
S/He who laughs last might just be slow on the uptake.
"When I came back to her, she had upended the bottle again like a crazy astronomer holding a telescope to her blind mouth. Her white throat shimmered as the whiskey went down." - p 98
That's funny, my white stoat came as the whiskey went down on it. That's pretty much the same as saying that this bk was published in 1961.
""You're going to be writing an autobiography."
""I'm older than I look," she said. "Twenty-four. I've had a very full life, and people keep telling me I should write it up. I mean, look how Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg cleaned up, writing up their youthful experiences. I've had many varied experiences."" - p 147
True, dat. I distinctly remember when Ginsberg cleaned up my puke. Or maybe I'm confusing that w/ when I cleaned up my image. Anyway, the above-quoted passage helps date this bk. Too bad the computer dating services I tried weren't as successful.
"Vitamins, the signs said, Foreign Cars, Pediatrics and Psychiatry, Fuchsias, Storage and Moving, Remedial Reading Clinic. Bury Your Loved Ones at Woodland, Rejuvenation, Real Estate." - p 153
See what I mean? That was practically a list poem.
'You call this review?! I call it an insult to my intelligence!!' - Lew Archer, art critic
Ross MacDonald's The Wycherly Woman
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 14, 2021
Ok, anyone out there in the great beyond (beyond my house) who reads my reviews knows that I'm on a Ross MacDonald kick. Instead of reading deep intellectual works I'm wasting my life away enjoying these turbulent tales. There are worse ways to spend my life. I cd be taking prozac & watching TV (shudder). I hardly took any reviewer notes about this one wch make my life easier. As I sit here while the buzzards sit right outside my window looking hungrily at me, as my whole life melts like a candle burning at both ends & on the sides too, I bravely try to write something funny enuf to make you LTY (Laugh To Yourself). If I fail, I'll never meet you & hear yr complaints. The darkness will soon be defeated.
"Sunlight poured in, migrating across the room to a small picture on the wall above the marble fireplace. Composed of blobs and splashes of raw color, it was one of those paintings which are either very advanced or very backward. I never can tell which. Wycherly looked at the painting as if it was a Rorschach test, and he had failed it.
""Some of my wife's work." He added to himself, "I'm going to have it taken down."" - p 3
Archer gets a job as art critic for the Baltimore Sun & proceeds to make the lives of local artists even more financially disastrous than they already were.
I've noted before & I'll note again that MacDonald uses more 'poetic' description in paragraphs that begin chapters. In this case, chapter 2:
"Boulder Beach College stood on the edge of the resort town that gave it its name, in a green belt between some housing tracts and the intractable sea. It was one of those sudden institutions of learning that had been springing up all over California to handle the products of the wartime population explosion. Its buildings were stone and glass, so geometric and so spanking new that they hadn't begun to merge with the landscape. The palms and other plantings around them appeared artificial; they fluttered like ladies' fans in the fresh breeze from the sea." - p 13
MacDonald's novels are chock-fulla-nuts, characters that meet psychological profiles.. in this case manic-depressive:
""In what way was she an odd-ball?"
""That's hard for me to say. Psych is not my line. I mean, Phee had two or three personalities, one of them was a poisonality. She could be black, and frankly I'm not so highly integrated, either. So we sort of matched up."
""Was she depressed?"
""Sometimes. She'd get so depressed she could hardly crawl around. Then other times she was the life of the party."" - p 24
"She was a thirtyish blonde in an imitation mink coat which had seen better days. So had she. One of those blondes who ripened early like California fruit, hung in full teen-age maturity for a few sweet months or years, then fell into the first high reaching hand. The memory of the sweet days stayed in them and fermented." - p 65
The "imitation mink coat" had "seen better days" when it was still the hide of that imitation mink. That's what you get for being such a talented chameleon. Or at least that's what the newspaper art critic sd. But let's revel in the glory of more literate types:
""How old are you?"
""I never tell my age. On account of I'm a hundred. Like Lord Byron when he was thirty-five or so and he was asked his age when he registered at some hotel. I think it was in Italy. He told them he was a hundred. I know how he felt. He died the following year at Missolonghi. Lovely story, isn't it, with a happy ending and all. You like my story?"
""It's a load of laughs."
""I have a million of them. Morbid tales for little people by the old lady of the sea. I think of myself as the old lady of the sea." Her mouth twisted. "I'm spooky, aren't I?"" - p 93
S/He who laughs last might just be slow on the uptake.
"When I came back to her, she had upended the bottle again like a crazy astronomer holding a telescope to her blind mouth. Her white throat shimmered as the whiskey went down." - p 98
That's funny, my white stoat came as the whiskey went down on it. That's pretty much the same as saying that this bk was published in 1961.
""You're going to be writing an autobiography."
""I'm older than I look," she said. "Twenty-four. I've had a very full life, and people keep telling me I should write it up. I mean, look how Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg cleaned up, writing up their youthful experiences. I've had many varied experiences."" - p 147
True, dat. I distinctly remember when Ginsberg cleaned up my puke. Or maybe I'm confusing that w/ when I cleaned up my image. Anyway, the above-quoted passage helps date this bk. Too bad the computer dating services I tried weren't as successful.
"Vitamins, the signs said, Foreign Cars, Pediatrics and Psychiatry, Fuchsias, Storage and Moving, Remedial Reading Clinic. Bury Your Loved Ones at Woodland, Rejuvenation, Real Estate." - p 153
See what I mean? That was practically a list poem.
'You call this review?! I call it an insult to my intelligence!!' - Lew Archer, art critic
January 9, 2011
If Shakespeare collaborated with Steinbeck, this is the type of crime novel they would come up with.
August 25, 2025
A disappointing book. Convoluted and confused. Going in overwritten circles with a detective that more often than not asks stupid and unnecessary confrontational questions. By the end of it I couldn't care less who killed whom and why.
"she had upended the bottle again like a crazy astronomer holding a telescope to her blind mouth."
"she had upended the bottle again like a crazy astronomer holding a telescope to her blind mouth."
October 18, 2019
This was my first foray into Ross Macdonald, and I can't say I was very excited by it. Not that the book was bad, but it just seemed like a not very imaginative update of Raymond Chandler without the bravado of Philip Marlowe. It was a very Chandler plot, and the first half of the novel was just Archer driving around and not getting information from people, with none of the wit of Marlowe and nothing approaching the charm of Archie Goodwin.
I wikipedia'd Macdonald and a lot of people seem to think he perfected the detective novel, and the descriptions of the plots in the back of this paperback look really interesting so I will probably give him another try. But this one was a bit of yawn for me.
I wikipedia'd Macdonald and a lot of people seem to think he perfected the detective novel, and the descriptions of the plots in the back of this paperback look really interesting so I will probably give him another try. But this one was a bit of yawn for me.
February 22, 2023
The Wycherly Woman is a good read. The type of quality writing and plot twists one expects from a Ross MacDonald novel. Rolled my eyes a bit at the very end. But overall, this Lew Archer novel still holds up after sixty years.
May 1, 2017
Great mystery and suspense novel.
Psychology that is believable. Plot that shows, not tells with explanations, about 98% of the time.
A literate writer with literary skills. Allusions worked in discretely.
The suspense comes mainly from watching the detective work, to me.
Some minor problems with character descriptions - who-done-it should not rest on somewhat vague descriptions of the characters.
A very fine writer - McDonald consistently comes up with a new way to say it.
Psychology that is believable. Plot that shows, not tells with explanations, about 98% of the time.
A literate writer with literary skills. Allusions worked in discretely.
The suspense comes mainly from watching the detective work, to me.
Some minor problems with character descriptions - who-done-it should not rest on somewhat vague descriptions of the characters.
A very fine writer - McDonald consistently comes up with a new way to say it.
May 11, 2024
I have returned to reading Ross MacDonald and his detective Lew Archer, whom I have been following for many years and whom I have read in chronological order, now arriving with La Wycherly at the halfway point of his adventures, and inaugurating the decade of the 60s. Faithful to the style of his previous novels, his detective Lew Archer arrives at a mansion of one of the wealthiest families in a Californian town, once the patriarch, the rich businessman Homer Wycherly, hires him to find the whereabouts of his daughter. , disappeared without a trace. Pulling on the thread, the detective's investigations will lead him to discover that the patriarch's ex-wife, with whom he had rather bad relations, has also been able to disappear, alternating with somewhat sordid and unrecommended company. All of this will give rise to McDonald's drawing up a broad, skillful and detailed descriptive overview both in terms of the environment/places (mansions, bars, roadside hotels...) and in the wide and varied fauna of characters whose gallery ranges from the wealthy classes to the lowest ranks. Evidently, MacDonald seems to say, no one is safe, everyone is permeable to the sordidness and low passions that trigger crime as a consequence of a society founded largely on the basis of success, money more specifically... (money, always the fucking money… paraphrasing Joe Pesci from Casino).
This novel, which follows quite well as a whole, works more because of this skill in description, because of a certain bitingness in the dialogues and above all, since it was created for this purpose, because of the mystery that it manages to generate for the reader once it is read has established the premise. The main problem is that all this puzzle, all this great tangle as well as overwhelming density in characters and subplots, has to be closed...and McDonald is closing it and interconnecting it in a somewhat hasty and mechanical way, with hardly any time for the reader to digest it, which generates a certain amount of incredibility (not credulity), a certain somewhat distancing coldness. His ability to, like Ballinger, pull a thread and generate an entire great tapestry is indisputable, but I think he himself ends up drowning in his oversaturation of elements in said fabric. It is clear that McDonald's purpose is to reformulate the classic novels à la Agatha Christie, and give them a touch of social criticism, as Chandler already did. Try to guess if the butler did it or the maid did it. I already sensed, practically from the beginning, who from the entire gallery of characters could be the bad guy of the show. But that's okay, this happens like in the movies, when you have a lot of background you can already see it coming... (like Tim Robbins' character in The Player)... the least important thing is that I guessed who it could be, because the novel works independently of that and for the virtues that I have already explained...now, also, and at the same time, it does not fully triumph (as I have already explained on other occasions, and I refer to my criticism above of " The Galton case, 1959") due to the weakness in some of the aspects cited. We will continue with MacDonald...
------------------------------------------------------------
(spanish review)
He retomado la lectura de Ross MacDonald y su detective Lew Archer, al que sigo la pista desde hace muchos y al que he leído siguiendo un orden cronológico, llegado ahora con La Wycherly al ecuador de sus andanzas, e inaugurando la década de los 60s. Fiel al estilo de sus novelas anteriores, su detective Lew Archer llega a una mansión de una de las más acaudaladas familias de una localidad Californiana, una vez que el patriarca, el rico empresario Homer Wycherly, le contrata para dar con el paradero de su hija, desaparecida sin dejar rastro. Tirando del hilo, las pesquisas del detective le llevarán a descubrir que también la exmujer del patriarca, con la que tenía relaciones más bien malas, ha podido desaparecer, alternando con compañías algo sórdidas y poco recomendables. Todo esto dará pie para que McDonald trace una amplia panorámica descriptiva, hábil y prolija tanto en el plano ambiental / lugares (mansiones, bares, hoteluchos de carretera…) como en la amplia y variopinta fauna de personaje cuya galería van desde las clases pudientes hasta los escalafones más bajos. Evidentemente, parece decir MacDonald, nadie queda a salvo, todos son permeables a la sordidez y bajas pasiones detonantes del delito como consecuencia de una sociedad cimentada en gran parte sobre la base del éxito, del dinero más concretamente…(el dinero, siempre el puto dinero… parafraseando al Joe Pesci de Casino).
Esta novela, que se sigue bastante bien en su conjunto, funciona más por dicha habilidad en la descripción, por cierta mordacidad en los diálogos y sobre todo, ya que fue constituida a tal efecto, por el misterio que consigue generar al lector una vez se ha establecido la premisa. El problema principal es que todo ese puzzle, toda esa gran maraña a la par que apabullante densidad en personajes y subtramas, se ha de cerrar…y McDonald lo va cerrando e interconectando de forma algo precipitada y mecánica, sin apenas tiempo para que el lector lo digiera, lo que genera cierto poso de incredibilidad (que no credulidad), cierta frialdad algo distanciadora. Su habilidad para, como en Ballinger, tirar de un hilo y generar todo un gran tapiz, indiscutible, pero creo que él mismo se acaba ahogando en su sobresaturación de elementos en dicho tejido. Está claro que el propósito de McDonald es reformular las novelas clásicas a lo Agatha Christie, y darles un toque de crítica social, como ya hiciera Chandler. Tratar de adivinar si lo hizo el mayordomo o lo hizo la criada. Yo ya intuí, prácticamente desde el principio, quién podía ser de toda la galería de personajes, el malo de la función. Pero no pasa nada, esto ocurre como en el cine, cuando uno tiene mucho bagaje ya se las ve venir...(como el personaje de Tim Robbins en The player)...lo de menos es que yo adivinara quién podía ser, porque la novela funciona con independencia de eso y por las virtudes que ya he explicado...ahora bien, también, y al mismo tiempo, no triunfa plenamente (como ya he explicado en otras ocasiones, y remito a mi crítica más arriba de "El caso Galton, 1959") por la endeblez en algunos de los aspectos citados. Segiremos con MacDonald...
This novel, which follows quite well as a whole, works more because of this skill in description, because of a certain bitingness in the dialogues and above all, since it was created for this purpose, because of the mystery that it manages to generate for the reader once it is read has established the premise. The main problem is that all this puzzle, all this great tangle as well as overwhelming density in characters and subplots, has to be closed...and McDonald is closing it and interconnecting it in a somewhat hasty and mechanical way, with hardly any time for the reader to digest it, which generates a certain amount of incredibility (not credulity), a certain somewhat distancing coldness. His ability to, like Ballinger, pull a thread and generate an entire great tapestry is indisputable, but I think he himself ends up drowning in his oversaturation of elements in said fabric. It is clear that McDonald's purpose is to reformulate the classic novels à la Agatha Christie, and give them a touch of social criticism, as Chandler already did. Try to guess if the butler did it or the maid did it. I already sensed, practically from the beginning, who from the entire gallery of characters could be the bad guy of the show. But that's okay, this happens like in the movies, when you have a lot of background you can already see it coming... (like Tim Robbins' character in The Player)... the least important thing is that I guessed who it could be, because the novel works independently of that and for the virtues that I have already explained...now, also, and at the same time, it does not fully triumph (as I have already explained on other occasions, and I refer to my criticism above of " The Galton case, 1959") due to the weakness in some of the aspects cited. We will continue with MacDonald...
------------------------------------------------------------
(spanish review)
He retomado la lectura de Ross MacDonald y su detective Lew Archer, al que sigo la pista desde hace muchos y al que he leído siguiendo un orden cronológico, llegado ahora con La Wycherly al ecuador de sus andanzas, e inaugurando la década de los 60s. Fiel al estilo de sus novelas anteriores, su detective Lew Archer llega a una mansión de una de las más acaudaladas familias de una localidad Californiana, una vez que el patriarca, el rico empresario Homer Wycherly, le contrata para dar con el paradero de su hija, desaparecida sin dejar rastro. Tirando del hilo, las pesquisas del detective le llevarán a descubrir que también la exmujer del patriarca, con la que tenía relaciones más bien malas, ha podido desaparecer, alternando con compañías algo sórdidas y poco recomendables. Todo esto dará pie para que McDonald trace una amplia panorámica descriptiva, hábil y prolija tanto en el plano ambiental / lugares (mansiones, bares, hoteluchos de carretera…) como en la amplia y variopinta fauna de personaje cuya galería van desde las clases pudientes hasta los escalafones más bajos. Evidentemente, parece decir MacDonald, nadie queda a salvo, todos son permeables a la sordidez y bajas pasiones detonantes del delito como consecuencia de una sociedad cimentada en gran parte sobre la base del éxito, del dinero más concretamente…(el dinero, siempre el puto dinero… parafraseando al Joe Pesci de Casino).
Esta novela, que se sigue bastante bien en su conjunto, funciona más por dicha habilidad en la descripción, por cierta mordacidad en los diálogos y sobre todo, ya que fue constituida a tal efecto, por el misterio que consigue generar al lector una vez se ha establecido la premisa. El problema principal es que todo ese puzzle, toda esa gran maraña a la par que apabullante densidad en personajes y subtramas, se ha de cerrar…y McDonald lo va cerrando e interconectando de forma algo precipitada y mecánica, sin apenas tiempo para que el lector lo digiera, lo que genera cierto poso de incredibilidad (que no credulidad), cierta frialdad algo distanciadora. Su habilidad para, como en Ballinger, tirar de un hilo y generar todo un gran tapiz, indiscutible, pero creo que él mismo se acaba ahogando en su sobresaturación de elementos en dicho tejido. Está claro que el propósito de McDonald es reformular las novelas clásicas a lo Agatha Christie, y darles un toque de crítica social, como ya hiciera Chandler. Tratar de adivinar si lo hizo el mayordomo o lo hizo la criada. Yo ya intuí, prácticamente desde el principio, quién podía ser de toda la galería de personajes, el malo de la función. Pero no pasa nada, esto ocurre como en el cine, cuando uno tiene mucho bagaje ya se las ve venir...(como el personaje de Tim Robbins en The player)...lo de menos es que yo adivinara quién podía ser, porque la novela funciona con independencia de eso y por las virtudes que ya he explicado...ahora bien, también, y al mismo tiempo, no triunfa plenamente (como ya he explicado en otras ocasiones, y remito a mi crítica más arriba de "El caso Galton, 1959") por la endeblez en algunos de los aspectos citados. Segiremos con MacDonald...
October 6, 2015
The fifth Lew Archer story I have read, and within a page MacDonald establishes a classic set-up, with Archer hired by the wealthy patriarch of a dysfunctional family to solve a wandering daughter job.
As usual, Archer takes it upon himself to dig deeper than requested to answer all the hidden questions of the case, whether anyone wants him to do it not. On this occasion this involves hunting out his clients estranged wife against orders, the eponymous Wycherly Woman.
MacDonald writes so well I always look forward to reading him, despite the unvarying nature of his style and plotting. The mystery always seems to involve a family riddled with dark secrets and animosities, the scenes a series of interviews where Archer obtains plenty of falsehoods but just enough facts to bring him closer to the truth.
By virtue of the law of diminishing returns I have graded this book 3 out of 5, yet if it had been the first I had read I would no doubt have scored it a 4. I will certainly read another Archer story sometime within the next six months.
MacDonald, like his inspiration Raymond Chandler before him, crafted a repeatable style which simply couldn't fail.
As usual, Archer takes it upon himself to dig deeper than requested to answer all the hidden questions of the case, whether anyone wants him to do it not. On this occasion this involves hunting out his clients estranged wife against orders, the eponymous Wycherly Woman.
MacDonald writes so well I always look forward to reading him, despite the unvarying nature of his style and plotting. The mystery always seems to involve a family riddled with dark secrets and animosities, the scenes a series of interviews where Archer obtains plenty of falsehoods but just enough facts to bring him closer to the truth.
By virtue of the law of diminishing returns I have graded this book 3 out of 5, yet if it had been the first I had read I would no doubt have scored it a 4. I will certainly read another Archer story sometime within the next six months.
MacDonald, like his inspiration Raymond Chandler before him, crafted a repeatable style which simply couldn't fail.
August 23, 2024
Beware.
Your sins will be punished. Remember Sodom. Do you think you can copulate like dogs in the public streets? Do marriage vows mean nothing to you? Remember, sin is punished to the third and fourth generation. Remember you have a child. If you don’t remember, I will remember for you. Rather than see you sink down in your slime, I will strike at a time and place of my own choosing. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Beware.
?
A Friend of the Family
The Friend of the Family letters received by Homer Wycherly from an, at the time, unknown author could have just as easily been written by Ross MacDonald himself and addressed to any number of his characters that feature as Archer's clients or antagonists in any one of the novels in the series.
Just as the letters epitomise the author's repeated facination with the notion that guilt is hereditary, The Wycherly Woman is one of the finest examples of MacDonald's nuanced intricate plots that fan out to an almost dizzying scope, only to have the dogged humane Lew Archer guide us through the mayhem and put everything back in clear stark focus.
Your sins will be punished. Remember Sodom. Do you think you can copulate like dogs in the public streets? Do marriage vows mean nothing to you? Remember, sin is punished to the third and fourth generation. Remember you have a child. If you don’t remember, I will remember for you. Rather than see you sink down in your slime, I will strike at a time and place of my own choosing. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Beware.
?
A Friend of the Family
The Friend of the Family letters received by Homer Wycherly from an, at the time, unknown author could have just as easily been written by Ross MacDonald himself and addressed to any number of his characters that feature as Archer's clients or antagonists in any one of the novels in the series.
Just as the letters epitomise the author's repeated facination with the notion that guilt is hereditary, The Wycherly Woman is one of the finest examples of MacDonald's nuanced intricate plots that fan out to an almost dizzying scope, only to have the dogged humane Lew Archer guide us through the mayhem and put everything back in clear stark focus.
August 11, 2023
I loved re-reading this, after 10-15 years. I remembered the one big twist (which some readers hated), but had forgotten nearly everything else.
I would not put this in the top tier of Lew Archers. The top tier are equal to anything. BUT, I would say this novel is better than a few which made the "Library of America."
Ross Macdonald himself always claimed that he owed as much to Hammett as to Chandler, and I thought the killer's very long confession was very Hammett-like, although Hammett might have added a wrinkle to prove the confessed killer wasn't really coming clean.
Publication date: 1961- the far side of the dollar as far as prices. Lew pays fifteen dollars for a night's stay at an upscale lodge, and can't stop grousing about it for two or three chapters. Whatever, grandpa.
Altogether a fondly remembered (or un-remembered) book which held up on re-reading.
I would not put this in the top tier of Lew Archers. The top tier are equal to anything. BUT, I would say this novel is better than a few which made the "Library of America."
Ross Macdonald himself always claimed that he owed as much to Hammett as to Chandler, and I thought the killer's very long confession was very Hammett-like, although Hammett might have added a wrinkle to prove the confessed killer wasn't really coming clean.
Publication date: 1961- the far side of the dollar as far as prices. Lew pays fifteen dollars for a night's stay at an upscale lodge, and can't stop grousing about it for two or three chapters. Whatever, grandpa.
Altogether a fondly remembered (or un-remembered) book which held up on re-reading.
September 15, 2022
"¿Sabe algo sobre las causas de la delincuencia juvenil?
—Lo suficiente como para escribir un libro, creo.
Se le iluminó la cara.
—¿En serio? ¿Es sociólogo?
—Una especie de sociólogo pobre. Soy detective."
"Era una de esas rubias que maduran temprano, como la fruta en California, permanecen en una adolescencia adulta durante algunos dulces meses o años, y luego caen en manos del primero que se acerca. El recuerdo de la época dulce se les queda adentro y fermenta."
"Salí con ella al patio; caminamos por un sendero del jardín donde se agazapaban las sombras y los rayos de la luna saltaban en el viento que venía de la bahía de San Francisco."
—Lo suficiente como para escribir un libro, creo.
Se le iluminó la cara.
—¿En serio? ¿Es sociólogo?
—Una especie de sociólogo pobre. Soy detective."
"Era una de esas rubias que maduran temprano, como la fruta en California, permanecen en una adolescencia adulta durante algunos dulces meses o años, y luego caen en manos del primero que se acerca. El recuerdo de la época dulce se les queda adentro y fermenta."
"Salí con ella al patio; caminamos por un sendero del jardín donde se agazapaban las sombras y los rayos de la luna saltaban en el viento que venía de la bahía de San Francisco."
January 11, 2013
To me, this is a strong entry in the Lew Archer series, possibly inspired, in part, by Ross MacDonald's troubled daughter. Lew Archer is hired to find a missing young woman named Phoebe Wycherly, and the case takes him to San Francisco where his search quickly involves him with shady real eastate speculators and other members of Phoebe's dysfunctional family.
Archer works his way through the intricate plot, reaching the truth in final, shattering pages. The detective story framework allows MacDonald a powerful template for a look at real people and complex human themes.
Archer works his way through the intricate plot, reaching the truth in final, shattering pages. The detective story framework allows MacDonald a powerful template for a look at real people and complex human themes.
September 14, 2018
"The Wycherly Woman" was another solid Archer outing with some great twists and turns. It doesn't really stand out from the pack with the best books in the series. Many of Macdonald's usual tropes are here - dark family secrets, misdeeds by parents that ripple onto their children, Freudian psychology and a sense of depressed resignation at the horrible things people do to each other. I definitely recommend it if you are reading them all, but there are even better ones to start with.
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