Review of The Spellman Files and Revenge of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz

Sometime early this year I read Lisa Lutz's Curse of the Spellmans, thinking that it was the first in the series. It's not, and because there are some references back to "previous documents" in the later books, I recommend that you read them in the correct order, which is:

1. The Spellman Files

2. The Curse of the Spellmans

3. Revenge of the Spellmans

The Spellmans are a San Francisco-based family who run their own Private Investigation business. They spend as much time investigating each others' secrets -- and trying to protect their own private lives from each others' prying -- as they do investigating outsiders.

The narrator is Izzie, chronologically in her mid-to-late 20s but emotionally stuck in an extremely awkward and rebellious adolescence. She is smart, devious, and determined. Her narrative voice is laugh-out-loud funny with wonderfully fresh and ironic observations.

The characters whose lives she chronicles include her extremely experienced, edging-towards-retirement mother and father; her retired cop uncle, Ray; her high-achieving, stick-up-his-butt lawyer of an older brother, golden-boy David; and her extremely smart, somewhat spoiled, and extraordinarily rebellious teenage sister, Rae.

Police Inspector Henry Stone plays such an important role over the course of the books that he practically becomes a member of this dysfunctional family. The assorted clients, bad guys, good guys, rival private detectives, lawyers, judges, and court-ordered therapists who show up tend to be drawn one-dimensionally, which I usually object to, but not in this case, since these caricatures make sense from Izzie's limited frame of reference.

My only negative criticism is that I don't think the reader gets much of a sense of place from these books. Although Izzie frequently rattles off the names of streets and sometimes gives a brief description of a setting, I never feel like I'm standing there with her. Although there was a definite sense of verisimilitude with the parking problems she encounters in the third book!

The first two books in the series had me laughing out loud frequently. The third book was still wonderfully funny, although Izzie is showing signs of growing up, which brings an unexpected -- but welcome -- poignance to the story. Lisa Lutz is a talented storyteller who plays with time and structure and pulls it off with page-turning intensity. I can't wait to get my hands on The Spellmans Strike Again, due out in March 2010.