The Spellmans Strike Again - Lisa Lutz

    2010; 388 pages.  New Author? : No.  Book 4 (out of 6) in “The Spellmans” series.  Genres : Women Sleuths; Humorous Crime Fiction; Dysfunctional Comedy.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Meet the Spellman family!  Mom, Dad, and their three children: 34-year-old David, 32-year-old Isabel (aka “Izzy”), and 17-year-old Rae (a high school senior).

 

    Collectively, they make up the entire workforce of a family company called "Spellman Investigations".  Want to know what’s in someone else’s trash?  As long s it’s bundled and in a trash container, the Spellman’s are happy to snare it and bring it to you.

 

    Family-wise, the Spellmans are known for “putting the ‘fun’ back into ‘dysfunctional’.  Weekly dinners are usually laden with sarcasm, and nobody’s lifestyle is above critique.  Maybe some sort of team-building exercise is in order.

 

    I’ve got it!  How about everyone’s mandatory attendance in a camping excursion!

 

What’s To Like...

    There are a slew of storylines in The Spellmans Strike Again, some of which involve sleuthing, but there are also plot threads focusing on family relationships.  Boyfriends and girlfriends of the three children are judged for worthiness; siblings may occasionally lock other siblings in rooms, and bizarrely, doorknobs keep disappearing all over the family house!

 

    The story is told from the first-person POV (Izzy’s), and there are a plethora of footnotes which sometimes refer back to earlier books in the series, and other times give some wry observations by Izzy.  They work flawlessly and are definitely worth your time.  There is also a Cast of Characters section in the back, giving brief bios of the main characters and which comes in handy if, like me, it has been a while since you read the previous book in the series.

 

    The book is divided into four parts consisting of 91 sections.  I wouldn’t call them “chapters”; they’re more like entries in a journal.  That may sound tedious, but it works charmingly.  I enjoyed the literary nod to Jeeves & Wooster, and was surprised to find I’ve been mispronouncing the Vietnamese cuisine, “pho”, for a long time.

 

    In amongst all the mayhem and humor, Lisa Lutz also examines a serious topic: DNA testing.  The Spellmans take on appeals for two cases involving people currently jailed.  The legal system was still grappling with the reliability of DNA analysis when this book was published (2010).  The author devotes a section in the back called “The Innocence Project” giving facts and figures as to how great an impact DNA testing has become in reopening criminal convictions.  Read it; you will be astounded.

 

    The ending is a bittersweet affair.  Spellman Investigations is successful in one of the reopened cases utilizing DNA analysis, but unsuccessful in the other.  Most of the plotlines are resolved and Izzy finds a boyfriend to replace the one she’s been referring to as ”Ex #12”.  We’ll address the “bitter” of the “bittersweet ending” in the next section.  It’s a quibble.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.6/5 based on 634 ratings and 155 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.20/5 based on 13,442 ratings and 1,084 reviews.

 

Kindle Details…

    The Spellmans Strike Again currently sells for $13.99 at Amazon.  The other five books in the series are priced in the range of $13.99-$15.99, except for Book 3, Revenge of the Spellmans, which is only $3.49 right now.  Lisa Lutz has four other novels in e-book format; they range in price from $4.99 to $9.99.

 

Excerpts...

    “How can we work this out?” he asked.

    “My brother says I should start making friends my own age.”

    “Ouch,” the inspector replied with mock injury.

    “We’re not enemies,” I offered, thinking that was friendly enough.

    “I want to be more than enemies.”

    “Archenemies?  I suppose we could head in that direction.  But you’d have to do something pretty awful for us to drive down that road.”

    “I was thinking in the other direction,” Henry answered, not amused.  (loc. 335)

 

    “What happened here?” David asked.

    “Feng shui,” Mom replied.

    “Gesundheit,” I said.

    “That’s so unlike you both,” David said, eyeing them suspiciously.

    “We got a book,” said Mom.  “It’s important for the marriage to keep clutter out of the bedroom.  And the bed shouldn’t line up directly with the door and should be approachable from both sides.”

    David stared at the television set that was still stationed in front of the bed.

    “Don’t they tell you to get rid of the TV, too?”

    “We don’t have to do everything the book says,” Dad replied.  (loc. 3115)

 

“I heard you loud and clear the first five times you said that.”  (loc. 1997)

    The profanity level in The Spellmans Strike Again is about normal for this series; I counted 14 instances in the first half of the book, two of which were f-bombs.  Alcohol is consumed on a number of occasions, but I wouldn’t call it excessive.  There are a couple “adult situations”, but they are tastefully described.

 

    Despite the Spellmans being a bunch of Private Investigators, this is not primarily a whodunit mystery novel, and that’s also been true of the prior books in this series.  Indeed, Amazon’s blurbs do not use the word “Mystery” in their genre classifications for this book, so this shouldn't be a surprise.

 

    My only quibble (the “bitter” of the aforementioned “bittersweet ending”) is that one of the recurring characters dies at the close of the story.  The death does not impact the storyline in any way.  I’m not the sort of reader who gets upset when a favorite character is written out of a series (a common George R.R. Martin habit), but I just don’t see any point in doing this here.  Maybe I’ll find out in Book #5, Trail of the Spellmans.

 

    Overall, The Spellmans Strike Again is another solid entry in this series.  The wit and humor are plentiful, there is ample sleuthing, the cases are fascinating, and the family interactions are hilariously zany. The final two books are on my Kindle; my only quibble is that I don’t sense Lisa Lutz continuing the series.

 

    8 Stars.  One last thing.  At one point Rae’s parents buy her a set of books titled “The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”.  This brought back childhood memories for me.  Those were on a family bookshelf when I was growing up, and I read them several times.

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.

Curse of the Spellmans - Lisa Lutz

   2008; 405 pages.  Book Two (out of six) in the “Spellman Files” series.  Laurels : Nominated for a 2009 Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Dysfunctional Comedy.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    Izzy Spellman, Private Investigator in the family-owned & -operated Spellman Investigations, has been busy lately.  First, there’s the family mysteries.  Her dad has inexplicably turned into a fitness freak.  OTOH, her ultra-perfect brother, David, has morphed into an unkempt couch potato.  And her mom seems to enjoy vandalizing a miles-away motorcycle in the wee hours of the morning.

    Then there’s the new and suspiciously-acting next-door neighbor with an obviously fake name (“John Brown”).  What is he hiding?  And Mr. Peabody’s hoarding snot-rags.  What’s that all about?

    All of this is really cutting into the one PI case that she’s actually being paid to solve – someone is abusing Mrs. Chandler’s front-lawn leprechauns every time she sets them up in a holiday tableau.  And the mayhem looks creepily similar to what was done to those gnomes years ago.  Allegedly (but never proven) by Izzy Spellman.

What’s To Like...

    This is an epistolary novel – it’s all done in the form of (transcribed) tape recordings, reports, and written notes by Izzy.  This makes for James Pattersonly short “chapters”; you can find a convenient place to stop any time you want.  The writing is witty.  The footnotes are witty.  Heck, even the Appendix and Acknowledgement sections are witty.  The book made me LOL a number of times.  And you’ll learn two new acronyms, MILFO and REAFO.  Good luck trying to figure them out.  Their meanings are listed in the Comments.

    Izzy is the star of the show, and you get to see everything from her POV.  But she’s prone to draw the wrong conclusions from the clues and evidence.  I kinda like that in a protagonist.  Her missteps result in her getting arrested four times in Curse of the Spellmans.  That’s gotta be some sort of record for a leading lady in a novel.

    Lisa Lutz weaves a backstory into the first 35 pages, which was nice since it’s been 4 years since I read the first book in the series (reviewed here).  CofS is a standalone book, but the usual caveat applies – you’ll get more out of the series if you read the books in order.  Like The Simpsons, the main fun here is following the antics of one hugely dysfunctional family.  Their progress towards “functionality” is minimal so far, although Izzy does try something new (for her) at the end of this book – apologies.

Excerpts...

    “How much did you have to drink?” I asked.

    “Only five beers,” Rae replied.

    “Only five?”

    “I didn’t think it was that much.”

    This is when Henry turned around, looking disturbed.  “How can you not think five beers is a lot?”

    “I saw Isabel drink an entire six-pack during the last Super Bowl.”

    Henry shook his head in disappointment.  “First of all,” he said to Rae, “your sister has had a lot of practice.”

    “Hey!”

    “Second of all, she weighs almost forty more pounds than you.”

    “More like thirty,” I snapped back.  (pg.219)

    “I’m here to apologize,” I said.  “Please invite me inside and offer me an alcoholic beverage.  I’m going to need some help getting through this.”

    You see, as far as I could recall, this was the first time I had ever attempted an apology to my brother.  David’s agonizing perfection was always a barrier to any real apology.  My brother walked over to his bar and poured us both a drink.

    “Your godlike perfection has infuriated me for years.  I’ve watched your playboy antics with women for close to a decade and I found you to be offensive.”

    “This is an apology?” David asked.

     “I’m getting to it,” I said.

    “Hurry.”  (pg. 394)

 “I’m fine.  Just seriously deep sleprived.”  (pg.  61)

    For the first half of the book, you’ll have no idea what the main plotline is while Izzy rambles from one misadventure to another.  And if you’re reading Curse of the Spellmans for the mystery story, you’ll likely to be disappointed.  But things get more focused in the second half, and all of the threads mentioned in the above introduction are resolved nicely.

    Instead, treat this book (and this series) as a light “beach” read – to be enjoyed for its humor and entertainment value, and not for its sleuthing.  And rejoice that your last name isn’t Spellman.

    8 Stars.  As good as the first book, but not better.

The Spellman Files - Lisa Lutz

2007; 358 pages. Genre : Dysfunctional Comedy. New Author? : Yes. Laurels : NYT Bestseller. Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

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Meet the Spellmans. Mom and Dad (Olivia and Albert) run a family-business Private Investigating company. They have 3 children. David (age 30) has been a perfect human being his whole life. Isabel (26) is the black sheep of the family and the narrator of the story. Rae (14) is a negotiating guru. All three children are/were also employees of the family business, and are adept at surveillance, running identity checks, and (when they're not spying for clients) spying on each other..

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The Spellman Files recounts Isabel's misadventures in this whacked-out family, and her efforts to live a normal life. Fat chance..

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What's To Like...

This is a laughs-on-every-page book. There are Isabel's (Izzy's) ten ex-boyfriends, the tattoo-loving best friend, and the vain attempts to get out from under the prying eyes of the rest of the family, especially when it comes to keeping current boyfriends. The footnotes are a hoot too. The 20-page recounting the "tennis wars" will have you ROTFL.

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The characters are likable and well-developed. Almost too well-developed. The first half of TSF is nothing more than a giant backstory. A cold case plot finally arrives around page 200, wanders among more of Izzy's life story, and joins up around page 300 with a subplot involving a sibling disappearance. Both plots eventually resolve themselves, but without any real build-up to a climax.
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Kewl New Words...

Only one, and I've looked it up before. Sartorial : pertaining to a tailor or tailoring. One of these days, that word will take root in my mind.

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Excerpts...

"Good morning, Isabel."

"Dad, what are you doing up so early?"

"I thought I'd watch the sun rise."

"How'd it go?"

"I missed it by a half hour. Who knew it was so early?"

"Are you deliberately blocking my path out the door?"

"Yes." (pg. 150)

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Officer Glenn introduced himself and his partner, Officer Jackson, then offered my father a warm handshake and said, "Good evening, sir. Is this your daughter?"

"That depends. What did she do?"

"We received an anonymous tip that a young woman matching your daughter's description was following random people around in the vicinity of Polk Street. Shortly thereafter, we found Emily following an elderly couple on Nob Hill. While that is not a crime, we consider it a somewhat unusual activity for a young lady at this time of night."

"Honey," said my father, "you don't give officers of the law a fake name." (pg. 163)

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The family that surveils together prevails together.

Because they're both PI's, Lisa Lutz's Isabel Spellman will inevitably be compared to Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum. Which is unfair, since they're not of the same genre. You'll find Ms. Plum in the "Mystery" section, and Izzy in "Fiction/Literature".

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I've read some of both series, and each has its merits,. I agree with the bookstores. The Spellman Files is not primarily a mystery, and if you read it for that purpose, you may be disappointed. But as a work of dysfunctional comedy (a genre I just coined), it succeeds nicely. It made me laugh, the characters are engaging, and I'm left wanting to read the sequels. 8½ stars.