I've previously talked about my love for this series. This is the third installment, and what made reading it extra excellent was that I found out Lisa Lutz would be at The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale to promote it.
The Spellmans are a family of private investigators in San Francisco. Izzy has mostly cleaned up her legal issues from the second book; she's faithfully following the letter of her agreement with the court and going to therapy. She's ducking her father's questions about when or if she might return the family firm. She's truly happy about Inspector Henry Stone's awesome new girlfriend. And if she just has that little chronic insomnia problem that developed after she moved into her brother David's secret apartment without his knowledge or permission, the fact that someone knows about that move and is blackmailing her, the prospect of her friend and lawyer Morty moving to Florida, and an inability to find her car--none of these are related at all, right?
When she's replaced at The Philosopher's Club by an Irish interloper, Izzy's left with only her downward spiral and a case she took on behalf of Milo's friend to occupy her. As she investigates a wife's mysterious behavior, she's forced to actually acknowledge some of the things that are bothering her. Oh, and visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Lutz delivers another funny and moving chapter in her series. Despite Izzy's near nervous breakdown caused by lack of sleep, the story is less dark than the second installment. This time around, it's the other Spellmans who are dealing with their own nuttiness--Rae is truly, unrepentantly monstrous, David is again behaving in an uncharacteristic and mysterious fashion and her parents are well, themselves.
Lutz was great to hear talk about her work. She admitted that these books getting called mysteries and nominated for Edgars is just the marketing machine doing its best. She set out to write comedic novels about a family, and that they are character driven and not plot-based is deliberate. It was funny because that's what I love about them; yet it's also reviewers' constant criticism. She worked for a family-owned PI firm, but as she put it "We never solved a 'mystery' that was anything like a detective novel." Instead, she works with the theme that mysteries are just ever present and it's a willingness to notice, snoop and ask questions that reveals them. And throughout all these books it's Izzy's journey and struggle to finally grow up, to figure out what it is that she wants and who she is as she asks these questions and digs into others' business that is the real story.
She also talked about the style of the books--the transcripts, lists, footnotes and file notations that help tell the story come from her scriptwriting background and she includes them because they get the story across in what might seem an unconventional format, but that works with her narrative style and Izzy's temperament.
The fourth book will be the last for the Spellmans, and in this book she laid the foundation for an epic battle between Izzy and Rae and some unfinished business with Stone. After that Lutz will move on to new projects, but she's one of those writers I'll keep reading no matter what.
And she was amazingly courteous to a woman who asked if freaking Janet Evanovich had been an inspiration, as if Evanovich is somehow the alpha and omega of comedic mystery tales. I felt like slapping her, I really did--Evanovich is a hack.
I bought the first book in the series recently if anyone local wants to read it. Or hit the library--really, I promise you, it's good stuff.
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