Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz

From the Publisher

THEY'RE BAAAAACK.

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 familymember.

(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.

The New York Times - Marilyn Stasio

Izzy returns in Curse of the Spellmans with another breathless tale of comic woe…It's nice to hear such an original voice.

Publishers Weekly

This lighthearted romp, focusing on the antics of Isabel Spellman and her family of private detectives, is delightful. There's not much vocal variation by Ari Graynor for the mystery's female characters: 30-year-old Isabel sounds exactly like her teen sister and her mother. But Graynor shines portraying some of the male characters, like Morty, the Spellmans' elderly lawyer, or Isabel's slurring, cigar-smoking roommate. Isabel digitally records conversations, and Graynor recites them back in a hilarious deadpan rendition. Lutz's first outing (The Spellman Files) was fresh, funny and unwieldy; her plotting skills take a leap forward here, masterfully juggling several compelling mystery threads at a time. The quirky Spellman family is still fun, and Graynor's sardonic and sly delivery doesn't attempt to upstage the writing. One disappointment is that S&S didn't release an unabridged version. Simultaneous release with the S&S hardcover (Reviews, Jan. 14). (Apr.)

Shelley Mosley Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information - School Library Journal

In this sequel to Lutz's side-splittingly funny debut novel, The Spellman Files, licensed P.I. Isabel "Izzy" Spellman has been arrested for the fourth time in two months, and no one from her oddball family of fellow investigators will bail her out. Her sister, Rae, has run over Izzy's "fiancé," Inspector Henry Stone, during a driving lesson. The senior Spellmans have staged a "disappearance," their term for a vacation where no one can reach them. To complicate Izzy's life further, a man with the suspiciously ordinary name of John Brown has moved next door, and she's absolutely positive he's up to no good. In other words, it's life as usual for the zany Spellmans, and who knows what will happen next. Once again, Lutz treats readers to a madcap roller-coaster ride. Fans of such hilarious sleuths as Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, Meg Cabot's Heather Wells, and Sarah Strohmeyer's Bubbles Yablonsky will find that Izzy Spellman can make them laugh their socks off, too. Sure to be popular in fiction collections of all sizes. [See Prepub Alert, LJ11/15/07.]

Kirkus Reviews

The dysfunctional Spellman family private-investigation firm is back in action with another heavily annotated adventure. Isabel "Izzy" Spellman has a problem. Through no fault of her own, she keeps getting arrested. Yes, she is arrested for investigating-some would say stalking-her parents' next-door neighbor, whom she briefly dated. And, yes, she has broken into his house, used a GPS tracker on his car and rifled through his garbage, despite, at one point, a temporary restraining order. But to a Spellman, raised to be a PI, this is normal behavior when suspicion lingers that something is "off." The fact that the neighbor is neither a client nor suspected of any known crime makes Izzy's obsession only slightly odder than usual. But Izzy's younger sister, Rae, is also acting bizarrely, as is Izzy's older brother, David, who has abandoned his straight-shooter lawyer lifestyle to drink all day. Izzy's best buddy Petra has disappeared. Izzy's father has a secret of his own: He certainly couldn't be going to a gym and eating broccoli voluntarily. In this second, longer Spellman adventure from former screenwriter Lutz (The Spellman Files, 2006), some of the debut's sparkle is gone: The idiosyncrasies of this mismatched family are now known, including Izzy's tendency to footnote anything that might approximate a fact. And the central story-Izzy's fixation on the neighbor-isn't founded on much. (He claims to be a landscaper and yet shreds a lot of paper.) But the snappy, honest narration by Get Smart-obsessed Izzy keeps things popping, with its mix of trade talk and brutal honesty: " . . . tonight would be the last time I could investigate (a.k.a. break into) Subject's residence without thewatchful eye of the parental unit." Most of the side stories, such as one involving Rae's teacher's dirty tissues, keep the laughs coming. The Spellmans return with more personality than plot. Agent: Stephanie Kip Rostan/Levine Greenberg Literary Agency

Product Details

• ISBN: 064194604X
  
• ISBN-13: 9780641946042
• Format: Hardcover, 409pp
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
• Pub. Date: March 2008
• Edition Description: Bargain
• Sales Rank: 788

• Reading Group Guide
• Forewords & Introductions
• Read an Excerpt

Reading Group Guide

An Introduction to Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz

"My mother used to say that if you can't verify a man's existence, you probably shouldn't go home with him." -- Isabel Spellman, Curse of the Spellmans

Isabel "Izzy" Spellman -- everyone's favorite female PI and the madcap heroine of the uproarious New York Times bestseller The Spellman Files -- is back, and she's just been sprung from jail for the fourth time in three months. When she finds herself homeless and simultaneously barred from the Spellman offices-cum-residence by a very inconvenient temporary restraining order, Izzy meets with Mort Schilling, her octogenarian lawyer, to hammer out a defense and save her now endangered PI license. Over San Francisco's best New York-style deli fare, Izzy recaps the highlights of her recent past and her encounters with the man whose villainy she's determined to unveil -- even if she must break the law to do it.

When Izzy first met John Brown, she couldn't have been more pleased with Spellman Investigations' new neighbor. Handsome in a way reminiscent of her favorite Hitchcock actor,* a great cook, and interested in her, John was too good to be true, so Izzy did what any sensible Spellman would do -- she began to investigate him. But between his "so common, too common, conveniently common" name, his curious reluctance to let her rifle through his wallet, and the permanently locked room in his apartment, Izzy can't get the information she needs for a background check. "His kiss made me forget everything," she admits, but -- forced to rely solely on her gut instincts -- Izzy concludes that he is up to no good.

John Brown soon becomes "Subject" andIzzy's infatuation quickly turns to obsession -- of the nonromantic variety -- when she bumps into him as he's depositing his recycling and observes that "For a gardener, he sure shreds a lot of paper." Izzy finds her suspicions validated when further surveillance reveals Subject participating in two clandestine package exchanges. However, Subject proves to be as wily as Izzy is persistent, and soon both the law and her parents are siding with him and trying to put a stop to her snooping.

To further complicate matters, ferreting out Subject's crimes isn't the only unpaid investigation that Izzy is working. A peculiar family on the best of days, the Spellman clan is outdoing itself in the erratic behavior department, so much so that Izzy finds herself writing up Suspicious Behavior Reports on each member -- even her brother, David, a normally boring specimen of male perfection -- hoping to figure out why everyone around her is acting so nutty. Her hitherto health-phobic dad is surreptitiously toting around a yoga mat and eating oatmeal, her mother is making midnight forays to vandalize a motorbike, and David has been moping and indulging in midday whiskey-tippling while his wife, Petra, suddenly goes out of town. Only Izzy's teenage sister seems to be herself. But since "normal" for Rae means that she's recently run over her forty-year-old police inspector and "best friend," Henry Stone, Izzy finds herself posing as Henry's fiancée to allay the fears of a nosy social services worker. To cap it all off, someone is reprising Izzy's most creative juvenile vandalism and the victim hires Spellman Investigations to find the culprit.

Curse of the Spellmans is a laugh-out-loud escapade that marks the much-anticipated return of detection's most winning dysfunctional family and confirms Lisa Lutz as one of today's finest comic writers because whenever Isabel Spellman** is on the case hilarious high-jinks are never far behind.

*Joseph Cotton.
**Or Izzy Ellmanspay -- depending upon which business card she's using.

Discussion Questions:

1. Is Henry only interested in Rae's welfare or are there other reasons he's let himself become a de facto Spellman?

2. Why should Subject's complimentary remarks about Izzy's haircut tip her off that he probably isn't the right man for her?

3. Does Izzy jump the gun on her suspicions? Would you feel comfortable dating someone as private as Subject?

4. Does Mrs. Spellman already sense Izzy's feelings for Henry when she asks Izzy to masquerade as his fiancée?

5. How could Izzy and Petra's Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, and St. Patrick's Day "modifications" of Mrs. Chandler's holiday tableaux be adjusted to make more of a political statement?

6. Are Rae's duplicitous e-mails to her vacationing parents entirely self-serving or do they actually help her parents' marriage?

7. What Spellman parenting techniques/aphorisms would you incorporate into your own child(ren)'s upbringing?

8. In which Olympic sport could you envision Izzy competing? Why?

9. What does Izzy's evolution from addictively watching Get Smart to Dr. Who say about her? Do you think Izzy will see the upcoming movie adaptation of Get Smart?

10. Other than professionally, in what ways do the Spellmans' suspicious natures and surveillance habits benefit them as a family?

11. Despite knowing her dating habits, both Mort and Daniel offer to set Izzy up romantically. Do you know someone -- real or fictional -- that you would like to introduce her to? Who is it and why do you think they would hit it off?

12. Imagine you're a bartender inventing the Izzy Spellman cocktail. What would be in it?

Forewords & Introductions

An Introduction to Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz

"My mother used to say that if you can't verify a man's existence, you probably shouldn't go home with him."—Isabel Spellman, Curse of the Spellmans

Isabel "Izzy" Spellman—everyone's favorite female PI and the madcap heroine of the uproarious New York Times bestseller The Spellman Files—is back, and she's just been sprung from jail for the fourth time in three months. When she finds herself homeless and simultaneously barred from the Spellman offices-cum-residence by a very inconvenient temporary restraining order, Izzy meets with Mort Schilling, her octogenarian lawyer, to hammer out a defense and save her now endangered PI license. Over San Francisco's best New York-style deli fare, Izzy recaps the highlights of her recent past and her encounters with the man whose villainy she's determined to unveil—even if she must break the law to do it.

When Izzy first met John Brown, she couldn't have been more pleased with Spellman Investigations' new neighbor. Handsome in a way reminiscent of her favorite Hitchcock actor,* a great cook, and interested in her, John was too good to be true, so Izzy did what any sensible Spellman would do—she began to investigate him. But between his "so common, too common, conveniently common" name, his curious reluctance to let her rifle through his wallet, and the permanently locked room in his apartment, Izzy can't get the information she needs for a background check. "His kiss made me forget everything," she admits, but—forced to rely solely on her gut instincts—Izzy concludes that he is up to no good.

John Brown soon becomes"Subject" and Izzy's infatuation quickly turns to obsession—of the nonromantic variety—when she bumps into him as he's depositing his recycling and observes that "For a gardener, he sure shreds a lot of paper." Izzy finds her suspicions validated when further surveillance reveals Subject participating in two clandestine package exchanges. However, Subject proves to be as wily as Izzy is persistent, and soon both the law and her parents are siding with him and trying to put a stop to her snooping.

To further complicate matters, ferreting out Subject's crimes isn't the only unpaid investigation that Izzy is working. A peculiar family on the best of days, the Spellman clan is outdoing itself in the erratic behavior department, so much so that Izzy finds herself writing up Suspicious Behavior Reports on each member—even her brother, David, a normally boring specimen of male perfection—hoping to figure out why everyone around her is acting so nutty. Her hitherto health-phobic dad is surreptitiously toting around a yoga mat and eating oatmeal, her mother is making midnight forays to vandalize a motorbike, and David has been moping and indulging in midday whiskey-tippling while his wife, Petra, suddenly goes out of town. Only Izzy's teenage sister seems to be herself. But since "normal" for Rae means that she's recently run over her forty-year-old police inspector and "best friend," Henry Stone, Izzy finds herself posing as Henry's fiancée to allay the fears of a nosy social services worker. To cap it all off, someone is reprising Izzy's most creative juvenile vandalism and the victim hires Spellman Investigations to find the culprit.

Curse of the Spellmans is a laugh-out-loud escapade that marks the much-anticipated return of detection's most winning dysfunctional family and confirms Lisa Lutz as one of today's finest comic writers because whenever Isabel Spellman** is on the case hilarious high-jinks are never far behind.

*Joseph Cotton.
**Or Izzy Ellmanspay—depending upon which business card she's using.

Discussion Questions:

1. Is Henry only interested in Rae's welfare or are there other reasons he's let himself become a de facto Spellman?

2. Why should Subject's complimentary remarks about Izzy's haircut tip her off that he probably isn't the right man for her?

3. Does Izzy jump the gun on her suspicions? Would you feel comfortable dating someone as private as Subject?

4. Does Mrs. Spellman already sense Izzy's feelings for Henry when she asks Izzy to masquerade as his fiancée?

5. How could Izzy and Petra's Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, and St. Patrick's Day "modifications" of Mrs. Chandler's holiday tableaux be adjusted to make more of a political statement?

6. Are Rae's duplicitous e-mails to her vacationing parents entirely self-serving or do they actually help her parents' marriage?

7. What Spellman parenting techniques/aphorisms would you incorporate into your own child(ren)'s upbringing?

8. In which Olympic sport could you envision Izzy competing? Why?

9. What does Izzy's evolution from addictively watching Get Smart to Dr. Who say about her? Do you think Izzy will see the upcoming movie adaptation of Get Smart?

10. Other than professionally, in what ways do the Spellmans' suspicious natures and surveillance habits benefit them as a family?

11. Despite knowing her dating habits, both Mort and Daniel offer to set Izzy up romantically. Do you know someone—real or fictional—that you would like to introduce her to? Who is it and why do you think they would hit it off?

12. Imagine you're a bartender inventing the Izzy Spellman cocktail. What would be in it?

Read an Excerpt

SUBJECT MOVES INTO 1797 CLAY STREET...

Sunday, January 8
1100 hrs

I have trouble with beginnings. For one thing, I don't find stories all that interesting when you start at the beginning. If you ask me, you only know there is a story when you get to the middle. And besides, beginnings are hard to determine. One could argue that the true beginning to all stories is the beginning of time. But Morty is already eighty-two years old, so given our time constraints, I'll begin this story on the date I met, or, more specifically, first laid eyes on "John Brown" (hereafter referred to as "Subject" or by some variation of his alias, "John Brown").

I remember the day that Subject moved in next door to my parents like it was yesterday. He was taking over the second-story apartment of a triplex, previously occupied by Mr. Rafter, whose tenancy lasted close to thirty years. David knew Mr. Rafter better than I since his bedroom was six feet from Rafter's den and their windows were level enough to provide each a fishbowl view of the other. Since Rafter spent most of his time watching television in his den and David spent most of his time studying in his bedroom, the two men got to know each other in their respective comfortable silences (minus the sounds of the television, that is).

But I digress. As I said, I remember the day Subject moved in next door like it was yesterday. And I suppose the reason I remember it so vividly is because of the events that transpired earlier that day, the events that caused me to be at my family's home at the precise moment Subject's moving truck double-parked out front. So, I'm thinking I should probably start earlier that day andmention the aforementioned events.

0900 hrs

I woke in my bed, or, more precisely, the bed in the home of Bernie Peterson, a retired SFPD lieutenant whom I sublet from. My illegal residence in the Richmond district is exactly 2.8 miles and one giant hill away from my parents' home, but I'm always just a phone call away.

The phone rang, like it always does, before I'd had enough coffee to face the day.

"Hello."

"Isabel, it's Mom."

"Who?"

"I'm not in the mood for this today."

"Not ringing a bell. When did we meet?"

"Listen to me very carefully; I don't want to repeat myself. I need you to pick up Rae from the hospital."

"Is she all right?" I asked, concern altering the tone of my voice.

"She's fine. But Henry isn't."

"What happened?"

"She ran him over."

"How?"

"With a car, Isabel."

"I got that part, Mom."

"Izzy, I'm in the middle of a job. I have to go. Please get all the details of what went down. As usual, record everything. Call me when you get home."

San Francisco General Hospital
1000 hrs

The woman at the reception desk told me that only immediate family would be allowed in Henry's room. I flashed my quarter-carat engagement ring and asked if fiancées qualified.

A nurse directed me toward room 873 and explained that he was in serious, but stable, condition.

"Can you tell me what happened?" I asked the nurse.

"Your daughter is with him now. I'll let her explain."

"My daughter?"

I found my sister, Rae, sitting by Inspector Henry Stone's bedside, staring at the electronic device monitoring his vitals.

Henry's nurse tried to smile over her annoyance at Rae's hypervigilant announcements.

"Seventy-two. His heart rate went up by five beats," Rae said as I entered.

My sister's eyes were bloodshot and her flushed cheeks showed signs of recent crying. The nurse looked relieved when she saw me and said to Rae, "Oh, good. Your mother's here."

"Eew," I said, offended. "I'm not her mother. Do I look old enough to be the mother of a fifteen-year-old girl?"

"I hadn't thought about it," she replied.

"I'm his fiancée," I clarified to the nurse, and then turned to the inspector.

Henry Stone was lying in the hospital bed with an assortment of tubes and monitors attached to his body, wearing the standard-issue hospital gown. Minus the unfortunate outfit and the single gauze bandage stuck to his left temple, he looked pretty much the same as he always does: well groomed, slightly underweight, and handsome in a way that's very easy to ignore. His usually short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair had grown out more in the past few weeks, which had the added benefit of making him appear younger than his forty-four years. Although at that moment the dark circles under his eyes and his patently agitated expression had offset that benefit.

"How is he?" I asked the nurse, trying to emote the appropriate shade of concern.

"There's some bruising on the legs just below the knee, but nothing's broken. The main concern is the concussion. He lost consciousness for five minutes and is experiencing nausea. We did a CT and everything looks fine, but we need to keep him under observation for forty-eight hours."

"Will he have permanent brain damage?" Rae asked.

Henry grabbed my wrist. Hard. "I need to speak to you in private," he said.

I turned to Rae. "Leave the room."

"No," she replied. I never thought a single syllable could possess such heartbreaking desperation.

"Get out," Henry demanded, unmoved by her wells of emotion.

"Are you ever going to forgive me?" she said to him.

"It's only been two hours since you ran me over," he replied.

"Accidentally!" she shouted.

Then Henry shot her a look that seemed to have more power than any lecture, punishment, or curfew my parents ever unleashed on Rae.

"Two and a half hours," Rae mumbled as she soberly exited the room.

Henry gripped my arm even tighter after Rae was out of earshot.

"That kind of hurts, Henry."

"Don't talk to me about pain."

"Right. Sorry."

"I need you to do me a favor."

"Shoot."

"Keep her away from me."

"For how long?"

"A couple weeks."

"Dream on."

"Isabel, please. I need a break."

"I'll do what I can, but—"

"Your sister almost killed me today—"

"Accidentally!" shouted Rae from the other side of the door.

"I need a Rae vacation. Please. Help me."

Copyright © 2008 by Spellman Enterprises, Inc.