ROSS MACDONALD – The Wycherly Woman. Lew Archer #9. Knopf, hardcover, 1961. Published earlier in condensed form in Cosmopolitan, April 1961, under the title “Take My Daughter Home.” Bantam, paperback, 1963. Reprinted many times since.

   Lew Archer is hired by Homer Wycherly to find his daughter Phoebe, who has been missing from school for two months. The case is not as simple as it seems on the surface, however, Two murders occur along the trail that Archer follows back, searching for both Phoebe and her mother. Illicit love has led to divorce, now murder, and blackmail of Phoebe for her mother’s death, which in neurotic fashion she blames herself for.

   You know, it’s great to read a mystery with a complicated plot that doesn’t also need complicated explanation. Excellent writing, in spite of occasionally corny similes that Macdonald seems to feel are expected of him, with a perceptive view of all levels of life.

    All of the characters are realistically portrayed, and become personalities rather than cardboard. Archer;s own outlook on life is succinctly summed up on page 10: Mr. Wycherly doesn’t trust himself “to do all the right things.” Archer doesn’t “trust anyone else to do them.”

Rating:   *****

— July 1968.