 Purissima is the name of the town used as the setting for Ross Macdonald's 1958 crime fiction novel 'The Doomsters'.Located on José María Alviso's Rancho Cañada de Verde y Arroyo de la Purisima in a rural area four miles (6 km) south of Half Moon Bay, the village was one of the earliest settlements on the San Mateo County coast.The first European mention of the area was noted by Juan Crespí on the Portolá expedition of 1769.