Full of dry wit, this is the hilarious story of a dysfunctional family of private investigators, who are generally too busy tailing and spying on each other to pay much attention to their clients. A sequel, Curse of the Spellmans, was recently released.

posted Nov 9, 2008 at 11:04AM

It’s hard growing up with a pair of private investigators for parents, a mom and pop who wield a hard line of questioning whenever anyone steps out of line—which for Izzy, middle child in the overly-inquisitive Spellman clan, is pretty often Izzy was the family rebel, with years of teenage hjinks and all-night parties under her belt. But now, at age twenty-eight, Izzy is grounded by the nuts-and-bolts of detective work as a P.I. for Spellman Investigations, which operates out of the family home in San Francisco. Her youthful misadventures make her ideally suited to telling lies, keeping secrets, and spying. True, her parents are not above tailing her on dates, but Izzy is making it work—until she meets Daniel Castillo, dentist, ordinary guy, and love of her life. Trying to keep her familial obligations and her romantic life separate is next to impossible, so Izzy quits the family business. Of course, she can’t get away that easily. The Spellmans are not accustomed to keeping out of each other’s affairs. Her parents bargain for one last case (one old, cold, missing-persons case), but things get infinitely more complicated when her fourteen-year-old kid sister Rae goes missing too, forcing the Spellmans to work together if they want to keep their family intact. Narrated in a conversational tone by wry-humored Izzy (equal parts Dirty Harry, Bridget Jones, and Nancy Drew) and sprinkled throughout with her numerous lists of misdeeds, The Spellman Files is a laugh-out-loud lesson in suspense, mystery, romance, and quirky family dysfunction.

posted Sep 14, 2010 at 9:18AM

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