Revenge of the Spellmans - Lisa Lutz

   2009; 372 pages.  New Author? : No, but it’s been a while. Book 3 (out of 6) in the “The Spellmans” series.  Genres : Private Investigators; Humorous Crime Fiction; Dysfunctional Comedy.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    Most likely, it’s going to be an easy job.

 

    Ernie Black wants Isabel “Izzy” Spellman to tail his wife whenever she leaves the house.  He thinks she might be having an affair.  Izzy is happy to take the job.  She needs the money and in this case the hours per week she spends keeping track of Mrs. Black will be short and lucrative.

 

    That’s important because Izzy’s life is busy at the moment.  She’s recently parted company with her parents’ family-owned and -staffed Spellman Investigations, and is now moonlighting as a bartender at a local dive called The Philosopher’s Club.  She’s also attending court-mandated psychological counseling sessions due to her indiscretions in a recent operation.

 

      Fortunately, wife-tailing surveillance usually turns out to be many hours of sitting in a stake-out car, bored stiff, only to find out the husband’s suspicions are unfounded.  With a little luck, that’s how this one will turn.

 

    Unfortunately, Izzy’s luck hasn’t been all that good lately.

 

What’s To Like...

    Revenge of the Spellmans is the third book in Lisa Lutz’s (presumably) completed 6-volume series titled “The Spellmans”.  Technically, I’m reading these books in order, although there has been a ten-year gap between this one and the previous one.

 

    The book is written in the first-person POV, Izzy’s, and her hilarious, self-deprecating outlook on life is one of the big plusses for these tales.  The Spellman family is utterly dysfunctional; which is amplified by the fact that they all work in the same family business, including the youngest sibling, 16-year-old Rae, who despite earning mediocre grades in her classes, has just scored a phenomenal (PSAT) college board result.  Everyone is sure she cheated somehow, but no one can figure out how she did it.

 

    Izzy has her own woes.  The counseling sessions are going poorly, she has housing and employment issues, someone keeps moving her car, and her new PI job rapidly gets more complicated.  It all gets worse when a blackmailer contacts her.

 

    The text has a slew of witty footnotes that even Terry Pratchett would be proud of, which frequently reference an Appendix in the back of the book that contains all sorts of interesting information, including handy bios of all the main characters.  Due to my ten-year hiatus from this series, I read that whole section at the start; it was very helpful.

    I enjoyed the story’s setting: San Francisco, which is one of my favorite travel spots.  I especially liked Izzy’s forced visits to some local cultural sites, including SFMOMA, where the impressive artwork, “Erased de Kooning Drawing”, really is on display.  Yeah, google it.

 

    The ending is good.  All the mysteries and uncertainties in Izzy’s life are all cleared up, usually via some neat plot twist that neither Izzy nor I saw coming.  Izzy also finally figures out how Rae is achieving those high PSAT scores.  There’s a warmhearted Epilogue to close things out telling how several of Izzy’s acquaintances continue on with their lives.  Revenge of the Spellmans is part of a series, but it also does just fine as a standalone novel.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

    Shiksa (n.) : a gentile girl or woman  (Hebrew}.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 659 ratings and 118 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.13/5 based on 17,890 ratings and 1,127 reviews.

 

Kindle Details…

    Revenge of the Spellmans currently sells for $10.99 at Amazon.  The other five books in the series are in the $4.99-$13.99 price range.  Lisa Lutz has a number of other standalone e-books, in both fiction and non-fiction genres.

 

Excerpts...

    I am a licensed private investigator who has been working for the family business, Spellman Investigations, since the age of twelve.  No, that is not a typo.  It sounds fun, I know.  But after decades of having your boyfriends investigated, your bedroom searched, your phones tapped, your vehicle tracked, and your every move documented, it gets old.  In my family, we don’t ask questions, we investigate.  (loc. 542)

 

    “I’m sorry, I’ll get out of here soon, I promise,” I said.

    “Don’t worry about it,” David said.

    “You’re being suspiciously nice,” I said.

    “I’m your brother.  I’m going to be nice on random occasions.”

    “Thanks.  But I’m trying to understand why this time you were so nice.”

    “Honestly, because you were so, so . . . pathetic.”

    “True,” I replied.

    “You need to take a shower,” David said.

    It had been three days.  I couldn’t argue with him.  (loc. 4247)

 

“Meditate on your own time!”  (loc. 4350)

    There’s very little to grouse about in Revenge of the Spellmans.  The profanity is sparse, just 5 instances in the first 25% of the book, and those were all of the “milder” variety.  To be fair, though, a couple of f-bombs do crop up later on.

 

    Things do not “build to an exciting climax” here.  But keep in mind this is a “Private Investigator” story, not a “Amateur Detective” one.  Such a case is successful if the client is happy with whatever information the investigator turns up without the police becoming involved.

 

    Revenge of the Spellmans was a complete reading treat for me.  I was fascinated by the various textual formats that Lisa Lutz utilizes, and the storyline moved at a sufficiently brisk pace that kept me turning the pages.  If you’re looking for a something to read akin to Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse or Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels, this series is right for you.

 

    9 Stars.  There were two neat acronyms worth mentioning: somebody throws an “ECOT party”, and a somebody has a “MILFO”.  Read the book to find out what they mean, and with regards to the latter one, it's not as dirty as you think.