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?

Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City

Boy oh boy, if you want to sink your teeth into a good adventure story that begins in a sinkhole, you’ve come to the right pocket park. Pocket park, you know, those tiny fenced in gardens carved out between two brownstones in a city like, say, why yes, New York City. The NYPD cordoned the sinkhole off with yellow construction tape before the morning was over, but that just increased its appeal. Go on, you know you want to find out why Ananka Fishbein went down the hole and whom she discovered there.

My goodness, I haven’t even mentioned Kiki Strike yet. Kirsten Miller has created an incredibly resourceful, undernourished, pale-haired junior spy who takes NYC by storm. In her debut novel, Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City, Miller sends us haring off into the underground tunnels with a troop worthy of their Holmesian appellation: the Irregulars. Dee Dee, Luz, Betty, and Oona, all ex-Girl Scouts, join Ananka and Kiki as they combine their many talents (forgery and explosives, to name a few) to explore the shadowy bowels of New York.

Just think what’s beneath Manhattan Island: tunnels for natural gas, electricity, water, sewer, subways, all interlacing beneath the great skyscrapers and heavy stone buildings of the 19th and 20th centuries. Rats, bodies, vaults, opium dens…well yeah! Where do you think the criminal and moneyed classes hid their loot and drugs and bodies from the police? Underground! Although the other girls don’t realize it at first, Kiki is on a serious, international security mission but she cannot achieve success without their help. And who better to come to her aid, with bombs, costumes, and maps, than a crack team of girls?

Go ahead, be an Irregular and dig deeply into this one, and don't forget the next installment: The Empress's Tomb. You won’t regret it for an instant, except for the, uh, rats…. Drat, where is that pest repellent, Dee Dee?!

Ever had any "underground" adventures? Speak up!