Revenge of the Spellmans – Lisa Lutz

Jun 3, 2009 by shanyn

Title: Revenge of the Spellmans
Author: Lisa Lutz

Private investigator Isabel Spellman is back on the case and back on the couch — in court-ordered therapy after getting a little too close to her previous subject.

As the book opens, Izzy is on hiatus from Spellman Inc. But when her boss, Milo, simultaneously cuts her bartending hours and introduces her to a “friend” looking for a private eye, Izzy reluctantly finds herself with a new client. She assures herself that the case — a suspicious husband who wants his wife tailed — will be short and sweet, and will involve nothing more than the most boring of PI rituals: surveillance. But with each passing hour, Izzy finds herself with more questions than hard evidence.

Meanwhile, Spellmania continues. Izzy’s brother, David, the family’s most upright member, has adopted an uncharacteristically unkempt appearance and attitude toward work, life, and Izzy. And their wayward youngest sister, Rae, a historic academic underachiever, aces the PSATs and subsequently offends her study partner and object of obsession, Detective Henry Stone, to the point of excommunication. The only unsurprising behavior comes from her parents, whose visits to Milo’s bar amount to thinly veiled surveillance and artful attempts (read: blackmail) at getting Izzy to return to the Spellman Inc. fold.

As the case of the wayward wife continues to vex her, Izzy’s personal life — and mental health — seem to be disintegrating. Facing a housing crisis, she can’t sleep, she can’t remember where she parked her car, and, despite her shrinks’ persistence, she can’t seem to break through in her appointments. She certainly can’t explain why she forgets dates with her lawyer’s grandson, or fails to interpret the come-ons issued in an Irish brogue by Milo’s new bartender. Nor can she explain exactly how she feels about Detective Henry Stone and his plans to move in with his new Assistant DA girlfriend…

After reading the first two Spellman books by Lisa Lutz, I was extremely pumped up to read the third. Unfortunately, my public library decided it didn’t need to to purchase this one, so I had to request it from inter-library loan. I love the characters and how much they are built up from book to book – I am actually going through withdrawal now that I don’t have any others to read. The problems weren’t quite as complex as the first two (though one of the “mysteries” was hard to understand even after it got explained to me), and I really really really got tired of the footnotes telling me that the previous books were “available in paperback!” (Really. Chances are if someone is reading the third book, they’ve read the others or will be interested in checking them out after they are finished – I was reminded what seems like 25 times of the books availability and it actually started to take away from my reading experience.)

The ending of the book left me hanging – I couldn’t believe it was done because of the way some of the relationships were at a stand still. According to her website, Lisa Lutz is working on a 4th book (The Spellmans Strike Again), but it’s not available until March 2010. I guess for now I’ll have to settle for what I’ve got and make myself forget about how much I want to read the next installment for awhile.

Related Posts:

• Three Series I Love
• The Spellman Files – Lisa Lutz