2010 mystery-adjacent; fourth in the Spellmans series. Izzy Spellman
is a private investigator, but she doesn't do much investigation.
In fact this book is mostly dysfunctional-family drama; it's
Lutz, so that's actually pleasant to read, but we've really left the
mystery, private investigator, noir sort of genre a long way behind.
The book does have an arc of worse-to-better for Izzy, but while that
could stand on its own I think it would make much more sense as part
of the overall story (and there are two more books to go on that).
People get into and out of relationships, two of them marry, someone
dies, but it's all done in a soap-opera style, and if you didn't
already know who they were you'd be missing a lot.
So while there is in theory a mystery (why are door knobs and lamp
shades disappearing from the family house?) it's going to be a mystery
with a solution quite close to home, not one that involves following
people or rooting through their rubbish. (There is some of that, and a
rivalry with another PI, but it's all lightweight stuff.) Izzy's
younger sister Rae gets involved with a legal project to help people
who may have been wrongly convicted, and gets Enthusiastic. By the end
there's a note of seriousness about Izzy and her family which hasn't
really been present before; they're all growing up just a little bit.
"You know that evolution is a constant process, right? Improving
yourself doesn't end when you've stopped getting arrested
regularly."
I'm sure it can't last, but I'm enjoying being along for the ride.
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