Trail Of The Spellmans

When I picked up Trail Of The Spellmans by Lisa Lutz I didn't realize this was the 5th in a series about the Spellman family. The Spellmans run a private detective agency in San Francisco, California. The parents are in charge. The older brother is a lawyer and he doesn't work for the family business. In fact, the older brother isn't working at all. He is taking care of his 2 year old daughter who has a knack for calling everything banana. Oatmeal is banana. Apple is banana. Toys are banana. The reason the toddler calls everything banana is the fault of the youngest Spellman, Rae, who is 20 and going to a local college. Rae was conducting a language experiment on her niece. Her brother and his wife are not happy with Rae. The main character is Isabel, the middle child, and one of the chief investigators. She spies on people. She helps one older professor who worries about water leaking in his apartment or his apartment burning down. He hires Isabel to check on his apartment which is one of the only reasons he is able to keep his job as a professor. Prior to hiring Isabel he left his teaching post multiple times a day to check on his apartment. When a local pair of parents hire the Spellmans to spy on their freshman daughter, Isabel doesn't think this is right. College freshman deserve the right to be anonymous sometimes. I enjoyed reading about Isabel and the Spellman family.