The Spellmans return with more personality than plot.
The dysfunctional Spellman family private-investigation firm is back in action with another heavily annotated adventure.
Isabel “Izzy” Spellman has a problem. Through no fault of her own, she keeps getting arrested. Yes, she is arrested for investigating—some would say stalking—her parents’ next-door neighbor, whom she briefly dated. And, yes, she has broken into his house, used a GPS tracker on his car and rifled through his garbage, despite, at one point, a temporary restraining order. But to a Spellman, raised to be a PI, this is normal behavior when suspicion lingers that something is “off.” The fact that the neighbor is neither a client nor suspected of any known crime makes Izzy’s obsession only slightly odder than usual. But Izzy’s younger sister, Rae, is also acting bizarrely, as is Izzy’s older brother, David, who has abandoned his straight-shooter lawyer lifestyle to drink all day. Izzy’s best buddy Petra has disappeared. Izzy’s father has a secret of his own: He certainly couldn’t be going to a gym and eating broccoli voluntarily. In this second, longer Spellman adventure from former screenwriter Lutz (The Spellman Files, 2006), some of the debut’s sparkle is gone: The idiosyncrasies of this mismatched family are now known, including Izzy’s tendency to footnote anything that might approximate a fact. And the central story—Izzy’s fixation on the neighbor—isn’t founded on much. (He claims to be a landscaper and yet shreds a lot of paper.) But the snappy, honest narration by Get Smart–obsessed Izzy keeps things popping, with its mix of trade talk and brutal honesty: “…tonight would be the last time I could investigate (a.k.a. break into) Subject’s residence without the watchful eye of the parental unit.” Most of the side stories, such as one involving Rae’s teacher’s dirty tissues, keep the laughs coming.
The Spellmans return with more personality than plot.Pub Date: March 11, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-3241-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2008
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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