The Spellman Files

Voila! For my personal favorite, I'm sending you into detective fiction that goes beyond the normal, directly into the realm of ferocious fun and games. In fact, Lisa Lutz’s The Spellman Files is just plain outrageous at times. How can you not laugh aloud at a family whose hobby is spying on each other? I really cannot wait to get my hands on her new book, Curse of the Spellmans.

So, imagine a family run private investigation agency. Dad is an ex-cop, SFPD, as is Uncle Ray, who moves in shortly after the fun begins. Mom and Dad have raised David, Izzy and little Rae on a steady diet of surveillance and background checks, but David veers into the more profitable legal profession, leaving Izzy to follow her parents into the business. Izzy, after an adolescent career checkered with mischief, rebellion and arrests, really isn’t suited for anything else, and steps into adulthood, slowly acquiring a string of ex-boyfriends and suffering nights spent sleeping in her car.

The truth is, though, that it’s Rae who turns the whole family upside down with her natural talent for surveillance, and the inevitable consequences thereof. Negotiations that lead directly to blackmail govern Rae’s hold on the family. She’s got dirt on everyone, is addicted to sugar, and will stop at nothing in her quest to make the family pay for their minor infractions and take her seriously. Every week David pays her off so she won’t squeal on him. The parents negotiate everything from hair washing to sugar usage as Rae slowly builds her nest egg. But it’s Izzy who holds the line and forces Rae to pay for her sins.

Family conversations are enough to drive a sane person crazy, and Daniel, the dentist and soon-to-be ex-boyfriend # 10, can attest to that. Questions follow questions and half-truths abound. When Izzy gets fed up enough to try to quit, she finds she cannot let go of the Snow case, and everyone chips in to keep her under 24 hour surveillance. The principals in the case have threatened to sue if she doesn’t let go; her parents have had it with her; the boyfriend thinks she’s truly nuts, and then there’s Rae, at 14, who gets kidnapped. In one fell swoop, the book takes an abrupt turn and the chase is on.

Join in the chase, and grab this book before it disappears. Only, tell us what you found out, okay?