The Spellman Files

Book 12 of my 2020 Reading Challenge

read from February 10 - 20

The Spellman Files

by Lisa Lutz

Book 1 of The Spellmans series

Summary (via the book jacket)

published 2007

Meet Isabel "Izzy" Spellman, private investigator.  This twenty-eight-year-old may have a checkered past littered with romantic mistakes, excessive drinking, and creative vandalism; she may be addicted to Get Smart reruns and prefer entering homes through windows rather than doors - but the upshot is she's good at her job as a licensed private investigator with her family's firm, Spellman Investigations. Invading people's privacy comes naturally to Izzy. In fact, it comes naturally to all the Spellmans. If only they could leave their work at the office. To be a Spellman is to snoop on a Spellman; tail a Spellman; dig up dirt on, blackmail, and wiretap a Spellman.

Part Nancy Drew, part Dirty Harry, Izzy walks an indistinguishable line between Spellman family member and Spellman employee. Duties include: completing assignments from the bosses, aka Mom and Dad (preferably without scrutiny); appeasing her chronically perfect lawyer brother (often under duress); setting an example for her fourteen-year-old sister, Rae (who's become addicted to "recreational surveillance"); and tracking down her uncle (who randomly disappears on benders dubbed "Lost Weekends"). But when Izzy's parents hire Rae to follow her (for the purpose of ascertaining the identity of Izzy's new boyfriend), Izzy snaps and decides that the only way she will ever be normal is if she gets out of the family business. But there's a hitch: she must take one last job before they'll let her go - a fifteen-year-old, ice-cold missing persons case. She accepts, only to experience a disappearance far closer to home, which becomes the most important case of her life.

My Opinion

4 stars

I pretty much never re-read books no matter how much I enjoy them but I grabbed this book again for my daughter's surgery/hospital stay (pretty intense but not life-threatening hip surgeries) as something entertaining when I ran out of magazines and tired of logic puzzles.  It definitely served its purpose - entertaining but not taxing - and I'll continue the series throughout her recovery.

This series is my go-to recommendation when I don't know the person very well and am faced with the anxiety of, "you like to read...what should I read?" question because it's not polarizing in any way and has a little something for everyone.  It's light and funny but not saccharine, it has mystery but isn't gory, and it's a series if you want to continue with the characters but it stands alone if you don't.

Quote from the Book

"I cannot pinpoint the precise moment when it all began, but I can say for sure that the beginning didn't happen three days ago, one week, one month, or even one year ago. To truly understand what happened to my family, I have to start at the beginning and that happened a very long time ago."