This is one of MacDonald's shatterproof constructs dealing more or less with the sins of the fathers -- and mothers -- and in particular with Stan Broadhurst who leaves his wife and son with another girl and is presumably looking for his father who also disappeared with another woman. It is so entangled you might as well give up in the first chapter when you're still ahead but you won't. It's Lew Archer again who did so stupendously well in The Goodbye Look but he's been around for years in better books than this one.