by Lisa Lutz
Part of The Spellmans, book 1
First published 2007
Isabel Spellman has spent twenty-eight years in a family where privacy doesn't exist. At Spellman Investigations, her parents run the business while Isabel handles cases and dodges their constant surveillance. Her lawyer brother maintains his perfect facade under family pressure. Her fourteen-year-old sister Rae has discovered the thrill of following people around the city. Uncle Albert vanishes regularly on drinking binges they call Lost Weekends. Isabel enters houses through windows, watches too many Get Smart episodes, and carries a history of romantic disasters and creative property damage. The surveillance skills that make her excellent at tracking cheating spouses become a nightmare when her own family deploys them against her. When her parents hire Rae to follow Isabel and report on her new boyfriend, Isabel reaches her breaking point. She demands out of the family business. Her parents agree to release her after she completes one final assignment. The case involves a missing person who disappeared fifteen years ago. Isabel accepts the cold case, but then someone much closer vanishes, creating the most crucial investigation of her career.
Genres: family, mystery, contemporary, thriller
Vibes: fast-paced, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Spellman Investigations
Period: 21st-century
384 pages · Kindle Edition · Simon & Schuster