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Revenge of the Spellmans (Spellman Files Series #3) »

Book cover image of Revenge of the Spellmans (Spellman Files Series #3) by Lisa Lutz

Authors: Lisa Lutz
ISBN-13: 9781416593393, ISBN-10: 141659339X
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
Date Published: February 2010
Edition: (Non-applicable)

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Author Biography: Lisa Lutz

LISA LUTZ is the author of Revenge of the Spellmans, The Spellman Files, a New York Times best-seller, and Curse of the Spellmans,  a national best-seller and nominee for the 2008 Edgar® Award for Best Novel. Although she attended UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine, the University of Leeds in England, and San Francisco State University, she still does not 

Book Synopsis

YOU THOUGHT YOUR LIFE WAS COMPLICATED

Private investigator Isabel Spellman is back on the case and back on the couch—in courtordered therapy after getting a little too close to her previous subject. As the book opens, Izzy is on hiatus from Spellman Inc. But when her boss, Milo, simultaneously cuts her bartending hours and introduces her to a “friend” looking for a private eye, Izzy reluctantly finds herself with a new client. She assures herself that the case—a suspicious husband who wants his wife tailed—will be short and sweet, and will involve nothing more than the most boring of PI rituals: surveillance. But with each passing hour, Izzy finds herself with more questions than hard evidence.

Meanwhile, Spellmania continues. Izzy’s brother, David, the family’s most upright member, has adopted an uncharacteristically unkempt appearance and attitude toward work, life, and Izzy. And their wayward youngest sister, Rae, a historic academic underachiever, aces the PSATs and subsequently offends her study partner and object of obsession, Detective Henry Stone, to the point of excommunication. The only unsurprising behavior comes from her parents, whose visits to Milo’s bar amount to thinly veiled surveillance and artful attempts (read: blackmail) at getting Izzy to return to the Spellman Inc. fold.

As the case of the wayward wife continues to vex her, Izzy’s personal life—and mental health— seem to be disintegrating. Facing a housing crisis, she can’t sleep, she can’t remember where she parked her car, and, despite her shrinks’* persistence, she can’t seem tobreak through in her appointments. She certainly can’t explain whyshe forgets dates with her lawyer’s grandson, orfails to interpret the come-ons issued in an Irishbrogue by Milo’s new bartender. Nor can sheexplain exactly how she feels about DetectiveHenry Stone and his plans to move in with hisnew Assistant DA girlfriend . . .

Filled with the signature side-splitting Spellmanantics, Revenge of the Spellmans is aningenious, hilarious, and disarmingly tender installment in the Spellman series.__________________________________________________

* Yes, plural

Publishers Weekly

San Francisco PI Isabel "Izzy" Spellman endures court-ordered therapy sessions as well as blackmail in Lutz's wacky crime novel, the third entry (after Curse of the Spellmans) in a series that keeps getting better and better. Albert and Olivia Spellman, Izzy's parents, want her to return to work for the family PI firm; otherwise, they may have to sell it. While Izzy contemplates their offer, she secretly moves into her brother's guest apartment; helps her elderly lawyer friend, Mort Schilling, accept his upcoming move to Florida; and mourns the loss of her bartending job. Will she rediscover her yen for snooping when she takes on "the Case of Ernie Black's Not Terribly Suspicious Wife Who Probably Wasn't Cheating on Him"? Or say sayonara to snooping? Hyper spy girl Rae, Izzy's teenage sister (who may have cheated on her PSAT), provides dizzy distractions. Punctuating the rapid-fire plot are amusing therapy session transcripts and footnotes. (Mar.)

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