The Wycherly Woman (Lew Archer Series #9)

by Ross Macdonald

Overview

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. Before he can find the Wycherly girl, Archer has to deal with the Wycherly woman, Phoebe's mother, an eerily unmaternal blonde who keeps too many residences, has too many secrets, and leaves too many corpses in her wake.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375701443
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/03/1998
Series:	Lew Archer Series , #9
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	569,724
Product dimensions:	5.16(w) x 8.01(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Ross Macdonald’s real name was Kenneth Millar. Born near San Francisco in 1915 and raised in Ontario, Millar returned to the US as a young man and published his first novel in 1944. He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and was awarded their Grand Master Award as well as the Mystery Writers of Great Britain's Gold Dagger Award. He died in 1983.

What People are Saying About This

Robert B. Parker

It was not just that Ross MacDonald taught us how to write; he did something much more, he taught us how to read, and how to think about life, and maybe in some small but mattering way, how to live.
—(Robert B. Parker)

Editorial Reviews

Published in 1949, 1961, and 1962, respectively, these three titles find gumshoe Lew Archer up to his neck in murder, kidnapping, and blackmail just another day at the office. This is hard-boiled detective writing at the top of its form.

Library Journal

THE WYCHERLY WOMAN is a classic noir puzzle, and Grover Gardner is ideal as the iconic Lew Archer, Bay Area gumshoe of the hard-boiled kind. Almost nothing is as it seems when Lew is hired by Homer Wycherly to find his college-age daughter, who has disappeared following her ill-matched parents’ messy divorce. Gardner gives distinctive voice to each of Macdonald’s many hussies, blackmailers, wackos, and minor characters with colorful quirks by using subtle shifts of pitch and timbre, so you always know who is speaking. The genre is dated, and the MacGuffin is strictly unbelievable, but you won’t care; Gardner keeps it tense, dramatic, and thoroughly entertaining, his performance a perfect match for Macdonald’s pace and style. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2010 - AudioFile