The Wycherly Woman (1961) is another complex murder mystery from Ross Macdonald.

This one didn’t really work for me.

Too many family secrets were unearthed to be believable. By the end, I couldn’t care less about any of the characters.

P.I. Lew Archer is summoned to the Meadow Farms mansion of Californian oil millionaire, Homer Wycherly, just returned from an ocean cruise.

Asked to locate Wycherly’s daughter Phoebe, missing since she saw Homer off two months before …

For one Hollywood adaptation of a Ross Macdonald book, they wanted Frank Sinatra. It ended up being Paul Newman playing the role, changing the detective’s name to Harper rather than Archer for marketing reasons.