Curse of the Spellmans: A Novel (Izzy Spellman Mysteries) (Hardcover)

by Lisa Lutz (Author)
Key Phrases: copycat vandals, suspicious behavior report, Henry Stone, John Brown, Clay Street (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Lisa Lutz, author of The Spellman Files, is back with another story of the shenanigans of the Spellman family: The Curse of the Spellmans. The "parental unit" started a private investigation business when Dad retired from police work. His wife assists him and their two daughters, Isabel, (Izzy) a 30-year-old with a habit of being arrested, and Rae, a 15-year-old Cheetos-loving teen, would like to think that they help out in the family business. Especially where Izzy is concerned, this is a stretch. Brother David is a successful attorney who has nothing to do with the family enterprise. He has troubles of his own.

Izzy has been living in the apartment of a friend while he is away. When he returns unexpectedly, it quickly becomes clear that being roommates with an old, cigar-smoking, poker-playing, big drinker isn't going to work. Izzy moves home temporarily and then the fun begins. She decides that their new next door neighbor, John Brown, whose landscape gardening business she judges to be a cover, is somehow making women disappear. She gets herself invited to dinner, discovers a locked room, believes his name is phony, follows him everywhere, has a restraining order against her, and still she can't let it go.

Meanwhile, Rae has befriended a great guy, a cop named Henry Stone, who is almost too good to be true. The reader starts pulling for him and Izzy to get together right away, even though he doesn't deserve the aggravation. Lutz keeps the ball rolling faster and faster with David's problems, her parents' frequent vacations, which they refer to as "disappearances," and the fact that everyone in the family has secrets from one another. If there is any curse at work here, it is that all the family members are terminally nosy. What they discover about each other and the other players keeps you turning pages and hoping that Lutz is hard at work on the next installment of this zany family's misadventures. --Valerie Ryan

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In the two years that have passed since the action in Lutz's hit debut, The Spellman Files (2007), zany Isabel Spellman, who works for the family PI firm in San Francisco, has become a somewhat responsible member of society. Unfortunately, she's also become obsessed with Subject (aka John Brown), a next-door neighbor who she's convinced has an evil secret she must expose, even if it means losing her PI license. Adding further hilarity is The Stone and Spellman Show, transcripts of recordings revealing 15-year-old sister Rae's fascination with her middle-aged best friend, stoic SFPD inspector Henry Stone, who endures Rae's adoration with liberal doses of Doctor Who watching. Henry's link to the Spellman family's fortunes suggests he might be a good candidate for Isabel's Ex-boyfriend #11 when Subject fails to make the grade. Fans of The Spellman Files will laugh just as loudly at the comic antics chronicled in this sparkling sequel. (Mar.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1 edition (March 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416532412
• ISBN-13: 978-1416532415
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #258,905 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Planning a Disappearance? Plan on This Book, May 5, 2008

By	Mark Baker (Santa Clarita, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Welcome back to the wacky world of the Spellman family. They really live in their own universe. This family of Private Investigators thinks nothing of investigating each other. They have deadbolts on their bedroom doors. They have taken to calling vacations disappearances and disappearances vacations. And they are so much fun to spend time with.

This book picks up two years after the end of the first book. And it seems everyone is acting strangely. Older brother David is staying home watching TV and eating junk. The father, Albert, is sneaking out of the house and returning with wet hair. Meanwhile, he's actually eating healthy. Olivia, the mother, is sneaking out of the house late at night herself. Youngest sister Rae is distraught about accidentally almost vehicularly manslaughtering her best friend, Inspector Henry Stone. And Isabel is hot on the trail of the copycat vandals ruining neighbor Mrs. Chandler's holiday displays. These vandals are copying the crimes that Isabel did when she was a teenage (not that she has any idea what you are talking about).

But what has really captured Isabel's attention is the Spellman's new neighbor. "John Brown" seems nice enough, but he sure has lots of shredded paper. And who really has such a common name? Plus Isabel can't track down any information on him. And he is evasive with answers to her questions. You know, simple things like where are you from? What do you do for a living? When were you born? What's your social security number? All this leads Isabel to be arrested four times (or twice depending on how you count) in a matter of months. How will it all end?

As with the first in the series, this book is hard to adequately describe. It uses short scenes (not really chapters) to propel the story forward and help us keep everything straight. I laughed multiple times as the story unfolded. Yes, there are some mysteries, but this isn't a mystery. This is a novel about a family. Which means these characters are well developed. And that's what makes the ending very touching.

With everything going on, the book never drags. And I had a smile on my face almost the entire time I was reading it. In fact, I even got caught laughing out loud in public.

A word of warning. This book (by necessity) spoils the first book about the Spellmans. So if you are interested, get The Spellman Files first.

I couldn't put the book down. While I think living with the Spellmans would drive me crazy, they are a wonderful family to visit in the pages of a novel. So pick up this wild, wacky, and wonderful novel today.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Side-stepping the genre, April 11, 2008

By	D. P. Birkett (Suffern, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I thoroughly enjoyed this funny and brilliantly original book , although it might be false advertising to call it a detective or mystery novel. It's true that the first person narrator, thirty year old Izzy Spellman, is a private detective, and there are two disappeared women, but the mystery is not a page turner. The story centers more on her relationship with her parents (also both private eyes) her 16 year old sister, and the various men she is considering adding to her list of ex-boyfriends. (The full list is in an appendix). She is inept, in the Stephanie Plum manner, but on the whole this is chick-lit, and Bridget Jones came to mind a lot more than Miss Marples. I don't know if this qualifies as transcending the genre - maybe it's sidestepping it.
This is second in a series. I missed the first one. I'm going back to the Amazon site right now to buy it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Less P.I., more growth. ("I have no idea what you're talking about."), March 10, 2008

By	Elizabeth (PA) - See all my reviews

In the second installment of the Spellman series, we encounter several small, harmless mysteries in this P.I. family and unlike other suspense building novels of its genre, only confront a tiny climax of 'bad guy' adventure near the end with less than 20 pages to go. But for this novel it works! Each family member, centered around the main character of Isabel, contributes a series of suspicious actions which make for a hilarious plot. (And yes, even though David, the oldest child, chose long ago not to join the family business, he has a mystery of his own.)

Lacking in shootouts, dead bodies, violence or surprise twists and turns normally associated with a mystery novel, this book investigates the quirks and odd, yet funny, behaviors that make this family so suspicious and loving of each other. While spying on her parents, Olivia and Albert, younger sister Rae, older brother David and the Suspect next door, Isabel faces the truth of her assumptions in the end and ultimately must deal with tough questions about her own life that she has kept buried.

Lisa Lutz's fast-paced dialogue and short scenes make for a quick, delightful read. Highly recommended.