Family Planning: A Lunghi Family Mystery [Hardcover]

Of all the matters that concern members of the Lunghi Family of Bath, England, in their latest outing, crime is the least of them. That eclecticism adds charm to this novel, but it also creates a problem: the Lunghis (Family Business, etc.) are private detectives, and this is at least nominally a mystery. While it's pleasant to learn that daughter Rosetta is studying line-dancing, and that Mama is so worried about her son Salvatore's "self-steam" ("Everywhere you hear about self-steam these days, like on programs with audiences that should not be pooh-poohed just because they're Americans") that she's thinking of going against her husband's wishes and investing in a restaurant where Sal can exhibit his paintings, these revelations don't generate suspense. True, son Angelo and his wife, Gina, are looking into the case of a woman who's being threatened by numerical messages on her pager, and the Old ManAthe founder of the agency and the shrewd businessman who put together the small real-estate empire that keeps the family solventAhas been asked to help prove that a client didn't murder his uncle ten years ago. And teenager Marie, the daughter of Gina and Angelo, does seem to have gotten in over her head in a scheme to earn some extra money for Christmas. As in real life, work and personal interests interact and clash, with results both surprising and predictable. The wonderful Regency city of Bath is treated as an ordinary, nondescript backdrop: another example of Lewin's sometimes regrettable refusal to hype anything for effect. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Lunghi Family Detective Agency (Family Business) in Bath, England, takes on an important murder case just before Christmas, but family members seem too preoccupied to pay it much attention. A sometimes humorous ramble with various Lunghis.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Mordantly funny, beguiling in the extreme, this debut novel in Lewin's new series starring the Lungi Detective Agency sketches the outline of three generations of Italian Brits who live and work together in Bath, fueled by fabulous home-cooked and takeout meals and endless pots of tea. The outline is filled in by a delicious series of set pieces mostly having to do with the more quotidian kind of family mystery rather than the murder that ostensibly occupies the plot: there's teenage David practicing his kissing technique on his own knuckles; there's Maria, David's sister, involved in a teen tangle of parental deception. Through it all, the Old Man and Mama, patriarch and matriarch, carry on like folks who have been married forever and who, while not quite having lost it, aren't at all sure where they put it down. Lewin's first in what will surely be a series about this madcap but fondly recognizable detecting family will appeal to many of the same readers of Donna Leon's similar if more elegantly drawn Venetian mysteries. GraceAnne A. DeCandido

Have a biscuitthe eternal Lunghi family greetingand listen to the latest adventures of Bath's most intimate detective agency (Family Business, 1995). Angelo Lunghi, visiting a dress shop whose owner is being harassed by dirty-looking young women scaring off her customers and extorting money for leaving her alone each day, picks up a second client who's trying on a dress: Esta Dumphy, whose beeper keeps picking up messages to call 999. Meantime, the family firm's been hired to help clear Winston Foxwell, a lottery winner who was perhaps too vehement in his opposition to a right-of-way that sliced through his late uncle's yard, from the charge of murdering said uncle and burying him in the spot the earth-movers dug up. As usual, though, these crimes are continually upstaged by sitcom family intrigues. What will happen when Angelo's son David forges his mother's name to a medical excuse from school and, out on the prowl, falls for one of the Dirty Girls? Or when Angelo's daughter Marie gets picked up, together with the ex-con who's been importuning her and her friend Cassie to do something a little questionable? How serious is the latest boyfriend of Angelo's sister Rosetta? Is his brother Salvatore really involved with an undertaker, as Mama Lunghi insists? Gentle family fun, heavy on the charm, shapeless as the velveteen rabbit. The Lunghis' approach to family planning is about as efficacious as the Catholic Church's. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.