Not cherchez la femme, because that means something different: find the mysterious woman who is the complicating factor at the root of a crime. Private detective Lew Archer would drop this tag in a later novel, The Chill, so he was well aware of it. No, finding the woman here just refers to Archer being hired to locate a missing person.
Specifically, he’s hired by a damsel in distress, a woman of a certain age who shows up at his “brand-new office” (this was the first Archer story) wanting him to find her daughter. He heads out to the woman’s big house (“huge and fashionably grotesque”) and then drives around L.A. asking questions. Some of the people he meets don’t like being asked questions, and at one point he gets knocked out. This comes with the territory in hard-boiled detective fiction; you have to be able to take your lumps. But ut all turns out to be a red herring because, as will so often be the case in Ross Macdonald’s fiction, the real rot turns out to be closer to home.
There’s a lot here that Macdonald would return to, again and again. “Find the Woman” feels a bit like a trial run, at speed. Archer jumps from place to place so quickly there’s almost no connecting tissue between the different scenes, as though he’s using a transporter to get around. And what actually happened to the woman is a bit far-fetched. But the family nastiness, also a Macdonald trademark, is on point and gives an indication of where he wasn’t going to be afraid to go as he settled in with Archer for the long haul.
Alex Good 
How many Archer books are there? Is this a Maigret/Marple situation?
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18 novels and a bunch of short stories. I’ll be working my way through like with Maigret and Marple.
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Have you read them before?
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I think about half.
I have a goal to post a review on every book in my library. Not likely, but at least possible in theory.
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Good to have goals!
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Is/was Ross MacDonald a big name in the hard boiled arena?
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Yes he’s quite highly regarded. And I think deservedly so. Good writer.
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I thought, Man, that’s a weak title for a novel. But I see it’s not only a story, but Archer’s first appearance anywhere. But I’m still puzzled by “a woman of a certain age.” Meaning indeterminate? Or we got a Chinatown thing going on? Or something else?
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A “woman of a certain age” is an old expression, meaning an age when it’s not polite to ask how old they are, with the added subtext that they’re sort of cougarish.
Archer does a quick assessment of all the dames who come to his office. This is what we get here:
“Mrs. Dreen was over forty and looked it, but there was electricity in her, plugged in to a secret source that time could never wear out. Look how high and tight I carry my body, her movements said. My hair is hennaed but comely, said her coiffure, inviting not to conviction but to suspension of disbelief. Her eyes were green and inconstant like the sea. They said what the hell.”
In short, she’s trouble.
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