Rex’s reviews of anything (but mostly books)

Lisa Lutz - Revenge of the Spellmans

Once upon a time there was a family of loonies. This family lived in San Francisco, where it’s possible that their looniness might not have been noticed by a populace quite accustomed to eccentricity, except that they were demonstrably loony by even San Francisco’s heightened standards. This is their story, the story of the Spellman family.

Meet Isabel Spellman, middle child of three, a Patricia Pan type who has yet to reach adulthood, even though she is well into her thirties. Izzy, as she prefers to be called, is in court-ordered therapy – treatment that, if you ask me, should have been parent-ordered decades ago, but wasn’t (her parents need therapy of their own, in fact). Izzy likes to think of herself as a private detective, following in the footsteps of her parents (Al and Olivia). In point of fact, she’s less a detective than she is a snoop and obsessively nosy, but that’s supposedly part of her charm. As our story opens, however, Izzy is on sabbatical from the family detecting business; instead she’s moved out of her parents’ attic and is currently plying the trade of mixologist in her favorite local pub.

This being a “detective” novel, Izzy – of course – takes on a case anyway, sort of easing back into business. A friend of a friend asks her to investigate his wife, who’s been behaving strangely of late: the usual unexplained absences, expensive clothing and jewelry that don’t appear on the family credit cards; all the things that scream “affair!” to a worried spouse. Izzy will eventually spend more time trying to figure out why a second detective agency is already on this case than she does in figuring out what’s going on…
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At a guess, the Spellman family will never be confused with the Cleavers (or, if you’re of a more recent television generation, the Huxtables). It’s not that they’re dysfunctional: that would be too easy. It’s more that they’re simply disturbing. There are five Spellmans, though only three and a half still live at home. Eldest child David’s a fairly successful lawyer, while youngest child Rae is a high-school sophomore. That leaves middle child Isabel, a.k.a. “Izzy,” to serve as the fulcrum of the family – which readily explains why the Spellman family is demonstrably unstable.

The family business is detecting. The PI business really means mostly skip tracing and background work on would-be employees, but hey: it’s still a living. Problem being that, for Izzy at least, it’s also an obsession – so much so that she privately investigates everyone in sight, including her family and would-be boyfriends. Cases in point? Her Dad’s suddenly started disappearing in the middle of the day and returning a couple of hours later with wet hair. And the Spellman’s new neighbor is clearly suspicious because his name is John Brown – nobody’s real name is John Brown…

Izzy being Izzy, we can be sure that she’ll investigate both her father and “John Brown” – not to mention her brother, her sister-in-law, her mother, and her sister. Izzy is nothing if not… compulsive. Read the rest of this entry »