"Previously published as The last word."

Izzy Spellman, a twenty-eight-year-old amalgamation of Nancy Drew and Bridget Jones, launches her career as a private investigator while working for the firm of her outlandishly dysfunctional family. A first novel. Reprint.

"The Last Word is Raymond Chandler meets Arrested Development. Zany, witty, and full of dark surprises, Lisa Lutz's novel is pure fun—and Izzy Spellman, PI, tops the list of 'Fictional Characters I'd Like to Meet for a Bourbon.'"—Gillian Flynn, New York Times bestselling author of Gone Girl The sixth installment of the critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling, Edgar- and Macavity-nominated and Alex Award-winning series by Lisa Lutz, finds our intrepid heroine of the series, Isabel Spellman, PI, at a crossroads. Izzy is used to being followed, extorted, and questioned—all occupational hazards of working at her family’s firm, Spellman Investigations. Her little sister, Rae, once tailed Izzy for weeks on end to discover the identity of Izzy’s boyfriend. Her mother, Olivia, once blackmailed Izzy with photo­graphic evidence of Prom Night 1994. It seemed that Spellman vigilance would dis­sipate after Izzy was fired for breaching client confidentiality, but then Izzy avenged her dismissal by staging a hostile takeover of the company. She should have known better than to think she could put such she­nanigans behind her. In The Last Word, Izzy’s troubles are just beginning. After her takeover of Spellman Investigations, her employees are the fur­thest thing from collegial...and Izzy finds herself struggling to pay the bills. But when she is accused of embezzling from a former client, the ridiculously wealthy Mr. Slayter, the stakes become immense. If Izzy gets indicted, she could lose her PI license and the Spellman family’s livelihood, not to mention her own freedom. Is this the end of Izzy Spellman, PI? The Last Word is, hands down, the most powerful book in the bestselling, award-nominated Spellman series.

Targeted by the members of her dysfunctional family for control over Spellman Investigations after staging a retaliatory takeover, Izzy is wrongly accused of embezzling funds from a wealthy Alzheimer's patient.

Former wild child Izzy Spellman has finally agreed to take over the family business, and the transition won't be a smooth one.

Dave, I just finished the first chapter of a new novel-a real crime novel with a dead body and all-and I thought of you... Paul and Lacey Hansen are pot-growing, twentysomething siblings sharing a modest rambler of a home in rural Northern California. When they find a headless corpse on their property they can't exactly call 911, so they simply move the body to another location. Let somebody else find it. Instead, the corpse reappears on their land. Clearly, someone is sending them a message, and it's getting riper by the day. But that's only half of the story... Enter authors Lisa Lutz and David Hayward-former real-life partners (professionally and personally) who have agreed to reunite for a tag- team mystery novel written in alternating chapters. One little problem: they disagree on pretty much every detail of how their novel should unfold. While the body count rises in Paul and Lacey's wildly unpredictable fictional world, so too does the intensity of Lisa and David's rivalry. The result is a literary brawl like no other, and a murder mystery every bit as unanticipated (and bloody).

Now in paperback, the fifth installment in the critically acclaimed, bestselling, Edgar Award-nominated series about a fearless private investigator Izzy Spellman and her quirky, yet endearing, family of sleuths.