Titles included Die wahre Mrs. Wycherly (The True Mrs Wycherly, German 1964);[4] Mutter und Tochter (Mother and Daughter), German e-book, 2018;[5] Så levende så død (So living, so dead), Danish 1966;[6] Honba za Phoebe (The Hunt for Phoebe), Czech 1972;[7] Rikas tyttöparka (Rich girl on the lam), Finnish 1990;[8] 위철리 여자 (Smart Woman), Korean 1992.

Asked to locate Wycherly's daughter Phoebe, missing since she saw Homer off two months before, Archer begins his search at Boulder Beach College, where she had formerly studied.

He then heads for San Francisco to interview staff of the docked cruise liner and learns that Phoebe was seen leaving the ship before it sailed with her divorced mother Catherine.

Archer's enquiries take him down the San Francisco Peninsula to a villa in Atherton once owned by Mrs Wycherley, and then to the home of Wycherly's brother-in-law, Carl Trevor, who manages the business for him.

In order to protect the vulnerable Phoebe from learning the truth of her parentage, Archer allows Trevor to commit suicide in return for a written confession to the murders.

Macdonald's agent Dorothy Olding (to whom the novel was ultimately dedicated) read through The Wycherly Woman while it was still in typescript and reported of its style that the "excellent mystery plotting goes on steadily, holding the reader fascinated as the sentences follow each other with an impelling rhythm so suitable to the subject matter, [and] there are underlying cadences of beauty".

Here the relationship between mother, father and daughter as revealed at the end does not simply explain the always interesting plot but also expands the scope of the events so that the work opens outwards rather than closes inward".