From the award-winning author of 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.
