Curse of the Spellmans: Lisa Lutz

The Wild Bunch, a.k.a. The Spellman family, has returned in the hilarious sequel to The Spellman Files.

Our heroine, Isabel “Izzy” Spellman, has a hunch that her next door neighbor, John Brown (known as Subject) is something just this side of a serial killer. However, a hunch turns into an obsession...to the point of being arrested (again) and slapped with a big fat restraining order. When Spellman Management refuses to bail their daughter out of jail (kind of like their version of Tough Love), it is left to Morty the Octogenarian Lawyer to get her out of the jam. Ordinarily this wouldn't be something terribly serious, but one more more misstep on Izzy's part and her PI license will be yanked.

Not only is she waist-deep in unauthorized neighborly surveillance of the Subject, she's also trying to nail someone vandalizing Mrs. Chandler's lawn ornaments....a vandal with an M.O. that looks a lot like certain incidents from Izzy's past with her best friend, Petra, as accomplice. Yeah, they were a little rebellious back in the day.

Meanwhile, her younger sister Rae is stalking her “best friend,” Inspector Henry Stone – last seen in The Spellman Files and as close to a knight in shining armor as you'll find. His only link to sanity in dealing with the cheeto-freak teen is Doctor Who.

Izzy's brother, the “normal one” without any ties to the family business...for a nice change of pace, he's got issues too.

Just like it's predecessor, this book is an absolute scream. Unequivocal family love can take many forms, but the Spellman clan takes it into an entirely different realm. Everyone is spying on each other, keeping Suspicious Behavior Reports on hand just in case they come in handy for bribery and/or blackmail at a later date.

One can't help but root for Henry Stone, and the chances he has for being Izzy's other half . But the best part of this novel is, by far, The Stone and Spellman Show (I'm not telling. You simply must read it to believe, and enjoy, it.)

On more than one occasion, I laughed out loud over the sheer craziness, and if a book is good enough to crack me up in public? Highly recommended. It's a perfect sequel in what I hope will be a long series.
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Publisher: Simon & Schuster (March 11, 2008)
ISBN-10: 1416532412
ISBN-13: 978-1416532415