Chick Lit meets Mystery in this clever debut by Lisa Lutz about Izzy Spellman, 28-year-old private investigator in her family’s firm, Spellman Investigations.
The story is an interesting, entertaining mix of family relationships, mystery, romance, friendships, coming of age… and I didn’t realize it was complicated until I started trying to write about it here. Lutz does a terrific job weaving the pieces together so you understand the timeline and all the different side issues without losing the sense of the story.
The main issue is that Izzy hasn’t had much success with men. And when she meets Daniel Castillo, DDS, she decides this relationship needs to stick. So she lies about what she does for a living (being a teacher seems safer than explaining about being a private investigator). When she can’t avoid it any longer, she introduces him to her parents who on the surface seem very polite to him, but she knows they’re digging for information so they can do a background check as soon as he leaves. It’s just the way they are. She decides it’s just too weird to keep working and living in the same house with her family, so she agrees to do one more job, then she’s quitting the firm and moving out.
In addition to the romantic relationship, Izzy solves a cold case about a missing teenager – a case her parents didn’t think she could solve and as she digs more into the past, a case they implore her to drop.
Then there is the rest of Izzy’s family. There’s her perfect brother David who seems to have a romantic interest in her best friend, her younger sister Rae who enjoys “recreational surveillance” regardless of the danger in following strangers around the city, and Uncle Ray who is determined to drink and gamble as much as possible.
After all the drama is over and the mystery solved, Izzy herself concludes “It could be said that the Spellmans returned to normal after that. However, there was no previous pattern of normalcy to judge it by.”
A second Spellman story is on the library shelves, Curse of the Spellmans. I hope it is as fun, fast-pasted, and quirky as the first one. Fans of Meg Cabot’s Heather Wells (Size 12 is not fat), Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum (One for the Money) or any of Jennifer Crusie’s smart-alecky heroines may enjoy these stories as well.
Blogging for a Good Book 
[…] other romantic crime capers, Melissa recommends The Spellman Files. Or, there’s the stylish 1960s film, How to Steal a Million, in which Peter O’Toole, […]