15 April, 2002
The Wycherly Woman
Ross MacDonald
1961
216 pp
I decided to try another classic American hard-boiled detective author. After all, the supply of unread Chandler and Hammet won't last forever, so I figure I'd better branch out. MacDonald was a good choice. He was clearly influenced by the two, what with the tough-guy private eye, the California setting, the unavoidable moral corruption of America's upper (and lower) classes. However, he's not a mere imitator. He has his own style, and his detective, Lew Archer, is different from Chandler's Marlowe, and probably Hammett's detectives, too, although I haven't read enough Hammett to say for sure-- he's certainly no Nick Charles.
The Wycherly Woman begins with Lew Archer driving out to a wealthy client's home. The client, Homer Wycherly, wants Archer to find his daughter, Phoebe, who disappeared over two months ago, the day after Homer left on a long cruise in the South Seas. The cruise left him completely out of touch, which is why he's only hiring a detective now, after she's been missing for several months.
MacDonald's plotting is very good. The case is interesting from the start-- what happenned to the daughter, and, moreover, why didn't anybody care enough to report her disappearance in the last two months? Nobody reported her disappearance: not her roommate, not her boyfriend, not her aunt and uncle, not her mother (who's divorced from the father, and apparently the last person to see Phoebe alive). The investigation proceeds realistically, and the reader gets all the same information as the detective, and is able to follow his thought process throughout the story. Even so, I didn't see the solution before MacDonald wanted me to. That is a rare achievement for a detective story.
Archer, the detective, is a likeable character. He's cool and collected, and intelligent in a practical way (as opposed to the "genius detective" archetype). Because he's so level-headed and low-key, this book doesn't have the emotional depth that Chandler's Phillip Marlowe stories do. That's not a criticism, just a difference.
Verdict: I'll read more MacDonald. Lucky for me I already have two more of his books, purchased years ago at a used book sale, shortly before I stopped reading detective novels for about 10 years.