Imperial Purple

Lisa Lutz
Curse of the Spellmans
Simon and Schuster 2008

Curse of the Spellmans is the sequel to The Spellman Files which was published in 2006. I didn’t review the original (Imperial Purple didn’t exist then) but I enjoyed it a lot. As well as being smart and sassy it had a surprising amount of real human feeling in it - particularly in the relationship of the central character (Isabel (Izzy) Spellman) and her little sister, Rae.

I am happy to say that Lutz has kept up the good work. Possibly spending two years on the book rather than rushing it out in a year has helped. Certainly it has a polished feel to it.

The Spellmans are a disfunctional family of Private Investigators. They compulsively spy on each other, record each other’s conversations and follow each other around, eager to acquire whatever is needed to blackmail the other before being blackmailed in turn. Izzy has noticed suspicious things happening with her family - her Dad is going to the gym and eating tofu, her Mom sneaks out in the night to vandalise motorbikes, her big brother David has abandoned his law business and sits around all day drinking and her little sister Rae is pestering a policeman old enough to be her father and has just run him over with her car. Oh yes, and her best friend has run away and refuses all contact.

All this is nothing compared to the suspicious behaviour of their new neighbour. What else can you say of a man who keeps his office locked, even when he is the only one there; who shreds his correspondence and puts different parts of it into the garbage separately thereby making it impossible to reconstruct; whose very household waste has nothing suspicious in it? Women he contacts just disappear. Is he using his cover as a landscape gardener to hide the bodies?

Izzy is determined to work it all out. Nothing, not even being arrested four times (twice at the behest of her own family), is going to stop her. You’ll have to read it yourself to get the plot details - I’m not going to spoil it for you - but suffice to say that all is revealed and wrapped up exceedingly well.

A worthy successor to an excellent first book. Go and buy it. Four stars.