Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman (USA 1998)

From the Publisher:
"A fine yarn.... The pace is fast, the plot well-knit, with plenty of suspense and surprise as extra dividends." -- Chicago Tribune
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.

"Macdonald is one of a handful of writers in the [mystery! genre whose worth and quality surpass the limitations of the form." -- Los Angeles Times

If any writer can be said to have inherited the mantle of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, it was Ross Macdonald. Between the late 1940s and his death in 1983, he gave the American crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity that his predecessors had only hinted at. And in the character of Lew Archer, Macdonald redefined the private eye as a roving conscience who walks the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin.

Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, ISBN: 0375701443 (March, 1998), 278 p., $12.00.

Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman (USA 1990)

From the Publisher:
THE WYCHERLY WHOMAN
Lew Archer was far from home and suitable for framing. A Southern Californian named Wycherly had hired him to find his daughter. But in San Francisco, Archer followed the dark-eyed girl's trail straight to her mother, Wycherly's blond and boozy ex-wife. Then people started dying, and before Archer could make sense of anything, both mother and daughter were missing. Somewhere in a foggy maze of murder, misplaced passion, and blackmail by the Bay, Archer has to find the Wycherly woman who's dead, and the one who's still alive...

ROSS MACDONALD
"[The) American private eye, immortalized by Hammett, refined by Chandler, brought to its zenith by Macdonald." -- New York Times Book Review

A SELECTION OF THE MYSTERIOUS BOOK CLUB

Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman. A Lew Archer Novel. Warner Books, ISBN: 0446359033 (October, 1990), 259 p., $3.95.

Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman (USA 1984)

From the Publisher:
THE WYCHERLY WOMAN
For some people the Valley was the promised land. For Lew Archer all it promised was trouble. Pretty Phoebe Wycherly had been missing for months. And Archer had a gut feeling she wasn't just long gone; she was long dead. Now all her daddy's millions couldn't buy a clue and the swimming pools and orange trees? Or explain why her mother was on the run, why a boozy blonde was begging Archer to kill a man, and why a small-time disc jockey had a bullet in his head and a suitcase filled with clean, green cash.

ROSS MACDONALD
Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, Ross Macdonald is acknowledged around the world as one of the greatest mystery writers of our time. The New York Times called his books featuring private investigator Lew Archer "the finest series of detective novels, ever written by an American."

Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman. A Lew Archer Novel. Bantam Books, ISBN: 0553238558 (February, 1984), 216 p., $2.95.

Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman (UK 1979)

From the Publisher:
LEW ARCHER
"by a long chalk, the best private eye in the business" Sunday Times

HIDE AND SEEK...
I said: "You're a strange mother, Mrs. Wycherly. You don't seem to give a damn if your girl is dead or alive."
She laughed in my face. I went to the door, followed by the girlish laughter.
A man was waiting for me on the other side of the door. His face was like a shiny, lumpy sausage, bulbous and queer under a silk-stocking mask. He swung a tyre-iron in his hand. It came over in a looping arc and reached the side of my head before my fingers touched my gun butt. I fell backwards into the room and darkness.

Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman. London: Fontana Books, 1979, ISBN: 0006146546, 252 p., 80p.

Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman (USA 1973)

From the Publisher:
THE WYCHERLY WOMAN
pressed herself against me. We were both aware of the gun in its harness between us. I felt as though I were being offered a large and dangerous gift I wasn't sure I wanted. Her pointed breasts were like soft bombs against me.
"I think you're exciting," she said.
No answer from me.
"Don't you like women?" She leaned on me like someone sliding down a wall.
We had some drinks and the room started jumping around us, colored and strange. Pretty soon we were sliding down that wall together...

THE WYCHERLY WOMAN
She was twenty-one, rich and beautiful. But her body was in San Francisco Bay. Archer searched from the seamy side of L.A. to the lowest of San Francisco's lower depths to find the bastard who'd dumped her there. He talked to innocent-eyed coeds, shady, seductive types, sleepy bellhops, and even to some nut who decided to add blackmail to the growing game of murder. About all he knew for sure was that the killer would strike again. When? The answer was a time bomb ticking away inside the head of a desperate murderer...

Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman. A Lew Archer Novel. Bantam Books Q7267 (March, 1973), 216 p., $1.25.

Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman (UK 1971)

From the Publisher:
LEW ARCHER
"by a long chalk, the best private eye in the business" Sunday Times

HIDE AND SEEK...
I said: "You're a strange mother, Mrs. Wycherly. You don't seem to give a damn if your girl is dead or alive."
She laughed in my face. I went to the door, followed by the girlish laughter.
A man was waiting for me on the other side of the door. His face was like a shiny, lumpy sausage, bulbous and queer under a silk-stocking mask. He swung a tyre-iron in his hand. It came over in a looping arc and reached the side of my head before my fingers touched my gun butt. I fell backwards into the room and darkness.

Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman. London: Fontana Books, 1971, 252 p., 25p.

Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman (USA 1963)

From the Publisher:
The brilliant new novel by the most penetrating mystery writer of our time
WHO was the murdered woman dragzed out of the depths of San Francisco Bay? Police identified her as Phoebe Wycherly -- twenty-one, rich, beautiful. WHERE would the mysterioes phone call lead private detective Lew Archer, hired to find the missing co-ed-and suddenly confronted by blackmail and murder? WHEN would the unknown killer strike again? The question took Archer into the lowest of San Francisco's lower depths. The answer was a time bomb ticking away inside the head of a man who was relentlessly driven to destroy again.

Ross Macdonald: The Wycherly Woman. A new mystery by an old master -- with the shocking power of a scream in the night. New York: Bantam, 1963, Bantam Books #F2665, 216 p., ¢50.