Their first caper, The Spellman
Files, was a New York Times bestseller and earned
comparisons to the books of Carl Hiaasen and Janet
Evanovich. Now the Spellmans, a highly functioning yet
supremely dysfunctional family of private investigators,
return in a sidesplittingly funny story of suspicion,
surveillance, and surprise.
When Izzy Spellman, PI, is
arrested for the fourth time in three months, she writes it
off as a job hazard. She's been (obsessively) keeping
surveillance on a suspicious next door neighbor (suspect's
name: John Brown), convinced he's up to no good -- even if
her parents (the management at Spellman Investigations) are
not.
When the (displeased) management refuses to bail Izzy
out, it is Morty, Izzy's octogenarian lawyer, who comes to
her rescue. But before he can build a defense, he has to
know the facts. Over weak coffee and diner sandwiches, Izzy
unveils the whole truth and nothing but the truth -- as only
she, a thirty-year-old licensed professional, can.
When
not compiling Suspicious Behavior Reports on all her family
members, staking out her neighbor, or trying to keep her
sister, Rae, from stalking her "best friend," Inspector
Henry Stone, Izzy has been busy attempting to apprehend the
copycat vandal whose attacks on Mrs. Chandler's holiday lawn
tableaux perfectly and eerily match a series of crimes from
1991-92, when Izzy and her best friend, Petra, happened to
be at their most rebellious and delinquent. As Curse of
the Spellmans unfolds, it's clear that Morty may be on
retainer, but Izzy is still very much on the case...er,
cases -- her own and that of every other Spellman family
member.
(Re)meet the Spellmans, a family in which
eavesdropping is a mandatory skill, locks are meant to be
picked, past missteps are never forgotten, and blackmail is
the preferred form of negotiation -- all in the name of
unconditional love.