Spellman Files

De: Lisa Lutz

Narrado por: Christina Moore

From the award-winning author of The Accomplice and The Passenger comes the first novel in the hilarious Spellman Files mystery series featuring Isabel “Izzy” Spellman (part Nancy Drew, part Dirty Harry) and her highly functioning yet supremely dysfunctional family of private investigators.

Meet Isabel “Izzy” Spellman, private investigator. This twenty-eight-year-old may have a checkered past littered with romantic mistakes, excessive drinking, and creative vandalism; she may be addicted to Get Smart reruns and prefer entering homes through windows rather than doors—but the upshot is she’s good at her job as a licensed private investigator with her family’s firm, Spellman Investigations. Invading people’s privacy comes naturally to Izzy. In fact, it comes naturally to all the Spellmans. If only they could leave their work at the office. To be a Spellman is to snoop on a Spellman; tail a Spellman; dig up dirt on, blackmail, and wiretap a Spellman.

Izzy walks an indistinguishable line between Spellman family member and Spellman employee. Duties include: completing assignments from the bosses, aka Mom and Dad (preferably without scrutiny); appeasing her chronically perfect lawyer brother (often under duress); setting an example for her fourteen-year-old sister, Rae (who’s become addicted to “recreational surveillance”); and tracking down her uncle (who randomly disappears on benders dubbed “Lost Weekends”). But when Izzy’s parents hire Rae to follow her (for the purpose of ascertaining the identity of Izzy’s new boyfriend), Izzy snaps and decides that the only way she will ever be normal is if she gets out of the family business. But there’s a hitch: she must take one last job before they’ll let her go—a fifteen-year-old, ice-cold missing person case. She accepts, only to experience a disappearance far closer to home, which becomes the most important case of her life.

Very Funny Book

This was a very funny and light hearted mystery. The only problem I had with it was that the pauses in the narration was a little off. More then once the pauses were so long that I thought the audible app had closed.

Good read

Surprised by final ending. Enjoyed the family dynamics and wierd ways. Will listen to more of these.

great Read

loved it. funny family antics, great story line. would definitely recommend this book !

Perfect tone, lighthearted mystery 

This novel is a great escape. The narration was well done, and the voices were spot on.

Wait! What happened to a promising story??

The beginning...what’s not to like? The protagonist is a snarky recovered juvenile delinquent, now 28, buried deep in a quirky family of PIs. Hilarious without being silly. The characters are flawed, infuriating, care deeply about each other and have a moral code of their own unlike any other.
Then it flatlines. The characters don’t learn, don’t grow, and any change in character is for the worse. The plot, always secondary to the characters, stumbles along. The story becomes repetitive, then a little depressing, then just sad. I’ll look at another Spellman story with the a little hope—better?—after I’ve recovered from the disappointment.