The Spellman Files

Lisa Lutz’s first novel, “The Spellman Files,” introduces readers to the lovable, albeit highly dysfunctional Spellman family. Be prepared to adore this zany cast of characters, that will butt their way right into your heart and have you laughing along the way. A strong female protagonist with a meddling family may, at first glance, seem a bit blase’, but don’t be fooled, the writing, narrative and perspective work together like a well oiled machine generating the ideal reading experience…

Secrets, scheming and sneaking are all part in parcel of a good days work for a private investigator. Albert and Olivia Spellman have been spying on people for a living since shortly after they wed and their three children have been show more immersed in this environment all their lives. Even though David, the Spellman’s oldest son, left the family business to pursue a career in law, he can’t avoid occasionally being lured into one of his parent's schemes. The youngest daughter, Rae, has been honing her spy skills from the tender age of six when she convinced her parents to allow her to tag along during surveillance operations. Now a mischievous teenager, she utilizes this unique knowledge to conduct “personal surveillance,” on her friends.

Isabel, 28, is the stereotypical middle child still trying to rebuild the bridge of trust destroyed during her rebellious teens. A sure-footed investigator, with sound judgment, when it comes to business; however, the same cannot be said for her choices in men. Criticized by her perfect older brother, emulated by her younger sister and hounded by her parents, Izzy’s life borders on the edge of insanity, which she desperately wants to escape.

Sharp-tongued, Izzy Spellman has even reduced her failing love life to a list of wise-cracking facts- name, age, relationship length and ‘famous last words.’ Izzy discovers potential ‘ex-boyfriend #9′ while working the case of Daniel Castillo. Izzy is quite smitten with the Guatemalan dentist and knows the importance of keeping her family in the dark about her new love interest. And in a family of snoops, that’s impossible! When she discovers her parents have Rae following her, it is the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back and Izzy quits.

Of course, this hard-nosed, scheming family isn’t going to just wither-up and go away, so they offer Izzy a deal…solve this one last case and she is free of her contract. Catch? Oh certainly- there’s a big catch…The case they choose is that of a missing teen from Marin County that disappeared near Lake Tahoe some twelve years ago. Izzy hoped her grit and determination would light a fire under this cold case and thus dissolve the contract that had held her hostage in the family business. So she literally throws herself into this decade-old case. However, while digging into the unsolved case, her little sister, Rae goes missing. She seems to have vanished into thin air and although Izzy and Rae bicker, as do all sisters, she loves the nosey little hellion and will stop at nothing to find her.

Sassy, witty and loaded with sarcasm, this fast-paced story swirls around the outrageously dysfunctional Spellman Family. Even in a house where it’s normal to find triple locks on bedroom doors, the Spellman’s hide their fair share of secrets. Lisa Lutz’s debut novel, “The Spellman Files” explores the inner workings of the family dynamic, from Izzy’s perspective. Revealing how just below the surface stuff… the snooping, scheming and wiretaps, there’s a deep, heartfelt sentiment. Cleverly layered throughout the story is that familiar ”something” we can all recognize…that “thing” bonds and unites families despite all the shortcomings and misunderstandings. “The Spellman Files: A Novel” is an entertaining read that unfolds with deliberate precision. Kick and crunch action is followed by off-the-wall, whip-smart punch lines that will have you laughing out loud more than once. Original, kooky and delightfully dysfunctional, Lisa Lutz gives readers a fresh new way to enjoy comedic crime novels. And readers can rejoice, there’s more zaniness to follow. So get acquainted with the Spellman’s and settle in for a truly enjoyable series.

Happy Reading! show less

When I started "The Spellman Files", I expected it to be a light-hearted, anarchic, PI story, with attitude. What I got was different and probably better.

"The Spellman Files" is full of witty lines and comic situations that spin out of control but at heart, it's really quite serious and more than a little sad. The laughter it produces is a defence mechanism for dealing with watching a family,that has no concept of normal, inflict damage on each other without any malice being involved.

The story is told from the point of Elisabeth Spellman, twenty-eight years old, still living at home, still single (possibly because she sees all of her lovers as future ex-boyfriends and refers to them by number for example ex-boyfriend #3 ) and still show more working for her parents in the family Private Investigation agency that she's been active in since her childhood.

She is the middle of three children. Her older brother is perfect and has escaped the family business and become a lawyer. Her (fourteen years) younger sister dreams of inheriting the business, does surveillance as a hobby, wants everyone to be happy and believes everything can be negotiated.

Much of the humour and all of the sadness in this book comes from the fact that the Spellmans' version of normal life is one in which family members spy on each other, engage in high-speed car chases and routinely interrogate, threaten and punish one another. There are no boundaries between work and family life. Privacy is something that you get only by taking active counter-surveillance measures. Trust is non-existant, yet love, quite deeply felt love, is all pervasive. Iz reminded me of the opening to a Philip Larkin poem: "They fuck you up, your mum and dad"

The story is told in an elaborately non-linear way that means that you discover the Spellman family an anecdote at a time, as you might be visiting them. The anecdotes have the grandiloquent titles that we give to stories that are part of family lore: "The War Of The Shirt" or "Fake Dental Appointment #2" or the one that opens the novel, "Car Chase #3". It takes skill to pull this off and Lisa Lutz does it flawlessly.

Ari Graynor does a wonderful job in narrating all this structured chaos and bringing the characters to life with distinct and easily recognisable voices. I suspect this is a book that is better in the audio version than as text because Ari makes sure no nuances are missed.

Even though I found the book more funny than sad, I couldn't put it down. It was weirdly compelling, perhaps because, beneath all the chaos and the mutual abuse, the Spellmans love each other as much as they are able, so their paranoia is always leavened with affection.

In the interview below, Lisa Lutz talks about "The Spellman Files" and shares some of here own experiences from working for a family PI business.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9R9X8e9gPs&w=560&h=315]

Click on the SoundCloud link below for a sample of Ari Graynor reading "The Spellman Files".

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/98433737" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /] show less

I originally read The Spellman Files in 2007 and loved it. So, I decided to read it again since it's been three years. And it was just as hilarious, just as zany, and just as all-around awesome as the first time I read it. Only that time I couldn't be bothered to write a review. Now, I am.

So, Izzy Spellman is basically a trainwreck-ish character, but that's why she's so loveable; because she has the POTENTIAL to be normal. Is she ACTUALLY normal? No. But that's okay. That's part of her all-around charm. In fact, I love the fact that she's far from perfect. It makes her more relateable. Plus, she's sarcastic and that's the language I'm most fluent in and therefore, love the most.

Now, the rest of the family...I mean, jeez. I seriously show more understand why Izzy had all of those angry and violent impulses. I would too if they were my family and I'm a pretty calm and zen-like person most of the time. But I think even I would want to repeatedly slam their heads against the wall. They were just so infuriating in that completely loveable and great way. The rest of the family was also really fun...in that dysfunctional sort of way.

So, I highly recommend The Spellman Files (and the subsequent sequels). It's extremely hilarious. I remember laughing within the first page when I first read it and laughing again while re-reading it. In fact, I think I've laughed more while re-reading just because I can't help but want to warn Izzy and tell her "You think THIS is bad? Your family gets sooo much more worse down the road much to my amusement." However, I should say that The Spellman Files isn't really much of a mystery. It's sort of mystery-lite and the mystery isn't a big deal in the book. Still, The Spellman Files is amazing, zany, wacky, and (it bears repeating) hilarious. Just an all-around entertaining read. show less

This book won’t work for some, but head into it in the right frame of mind and it’s a fun ride, a modern screwball comedy crossed with spy caper, [b:Harriet the Spy|232576|Harriet the Spy (Harriet the Spy #1)|Louise Fitzhugh|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1518446869i/232576._SX50_.jpg|1429939] meets [b:Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead|9231999|Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (Claire DeWitt Mysteries, #1)|Sara Gran|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312909281i/9231999._SY75_.jpg|14112168].

Isabel is a private investigator in the family business, Spellman Investigations. It’s been a hard road getting there after a decade of childish rebellion. show more “Since David [her brother] had cornered the market on perfection, I had to settle for mining the depths of my own imperfection.” Spellman co-workers include younger sister, Rae (“Rae would eventually throw everything off balance, but I’ll get to that later.”) Then there’s her parents: her mother, Olivia who met her father when she was spying on a potential brother-in-law, and her father and former police detective, Albert. Albert has a special sense of humor: “His sense of humor is purely cheap vaudeville, yet everyone falls for it. Some of his routines–like sneezing Eastern European names–he never grows tired of. Only his children have suggested he work up some new material.”

A recent addition to the team is former officer and born-again gambler, Uncle Ray, perhaps the only straight-shooter in the family. “I asked him what he’d been up to for the past two weeks and he replied, ‘Let’s see. I went on a five-day bender, sobered up during a forty-eight-hour poker game. Had a few dates in Reno. Another poker game. Three days, for the life of me, I can’t remember.” Her brother David, refused to join the family business–he’s rebelled by becoming a lawyer. “The truth was, the job didn’t interest David. He thought people had a right to privacy. The rest of us did not.”

One of the most interesting aspects of the story is its deconstructed structure. A number of journal entries, flashbacks, interrogations and scene shots build both current story and background but require reader synthesis. Isabel is a little obsessed with keeping track (or proving her case) and a number of her exploits are list-oriented, reminding me of Cursed. For instance, there’s profiles summarizing relationships through “Ex-Boyfriend #8” (#6 and #9 “simply cannot reduce to the data that will fit on a three-by-five index card“) and Uncle’s series of benders, known as “Lost Weekend #.” There’s also the three main incidents that changed her path from her life of irresponsible hedonism to one of maturity. While it is the type of structure that can smack of authorial gimmick, here it worked. Perhaps the disjointed set-up allows for certain parallels to be made between the narrator and the reader, so that they are at similar perspective when the main event appears. However, Lutz is smart enough to not stay with the device too long; once past the introduction and historical context, narrative smooths out and becomes more linear.

Writing is clever with lines that make me laugh out loud. Much like the screwball comedy, the humor isn’t based on one-liners, but a clever set-up that suddenly resolves into an absurd scenario. There’s a scene on a stake-out with young Rae that particularly amused me. The romance plot is a series of harebrained schemes that escalate from one little lie.

Plotting is interesting; truly, the story is more about a dysfunctional family who specializes in investigative work than any specific mystery. There’s a sub-plot of Ex-Boyfriend #9, which really does start to resemble screwball comedy, and a war between the Ra(y/e)s that is remarkably calculating. Those who want a crime-solving story are apt to be disappointed. I hesitate to compare it to Janet Evanovich‘s Stephanie Plum series; this is in many ways darker, less functional, less “I Love Lucy.” There’s proliferate mention of drug use in the past, and some questionable family dynamics. The reader gets the feel there is a mystery in the beginning, but it’s only hinted at in an early interview with a police detective. Half-way through, Isabel is given her own cold case to work, but the conclusion and resolution were no real surprise to me as a reader. It serves more as a foil for the narrator’s own family. I didn’t mind the lack of suspense involved with it, as by then I understood the real story is the family and Isabel.

I enjoyed it–like frozen yogurt with sprinkles, it went down smooth and clean with no ice-cream headache or aftertaste. Note that it likely has high re-read potential, especially given it is more about character and relationships than mystery. Next one already ordered from the library.

5/24: Re-read. Still holds up; added it to my e-library when it was available for a deal. Also probably worth noting it passed the mom test. show less

The family business is snooping. The firm of Spellman Investigations, mom, pop, daughters, and alcoholic uncle are unconcerned about some abstract idea like a right to privacy, not for the people their clients want them to watch and not for other members of the family. This is what puts the fun in dysfunctional for these clan capers as twenty-eight-year-old Izzy tries to keep her love life of serial ex-boyfriends separate from her relatives, and keep her younger sister Rae from her Harriet the Spy hobby of recreational surveillance. A hobby that is surely the reason for her sudden disappearance.

I typically don't grab books from the mystery section, but I am so glad that I made an exception for The Spellman Files. The Spellman's have got to be one of the quirkiest and most memorable fictional families. Though there are a couple mystery's in this book they are only a diversion from the antics of the Spellman's who all work for the family-owned private investigators business. The nature of the business makes family members extremely suspicious, even of each other, with hilarious results. Everyone installs deadbolts on their bedroom doors, parents chase daughters in high-speed car chases, and siblings bribe and blackmail each other to keep secrets. This is well-worth reading and I am looking forward to the sequel.

A piece of light reading, just what was ordered after this month's-worth of work. The first in a series, this so-called mystery is full of wise-cracks and demented family members who somehow seem perfectly normal when taken as a group. I say 'so-called' because the family is definitely more important to the story than the mystery, which I unravelled almost immediately. But then, it wasn't at all the point. Not quite laugh-out-loud funny, but blithely wacky. I'll probably look for the next one.