Synopses & Reviews
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).
Review
"It's not uncommon for two authors to work on a book together. It's also not uncommon for collaborating authors to each write alternate chapters. Slightly less common is for the two authors to be writing a mystery a chapter at a time, where neither knows in advance who the murderer is or what the other writer will do. What makes Heads You Lose unique is that Lisa Lutz and David Hayward included the emails they exchanged after each chapter was written. These messages basically say, 'Here's where I'm going with this. Please don't mess it up too much,' though they often contain criticisms of the other's chapters. Even footnotes that the authors made in each other's chapters are included in the book. The ground rules were that each author wrote her/his chapters unimpeded, and the other author couldn't go back and undo anything done by the first author." Doug Brown, Powells.com (Read the entire Powells.com review)
Synopsis
Meet Paul and Lacey Hansen: orphaned, pot-growing twenty-something siblings eking out a living in rural Northern California. When a headless corpse appears on their property, they can't exactly dial 911, so they move the body and wait for the police to find it. Instead, the corpse reappears, a few days riper...and an amateur sleuth is born. Make that two.
When collaborators Lutz and Hayward (former romantic partners) start to disagree about how the story should unfold, the body count rises, victims and suspects alike develop surprising characteristics (meet Brandy Chester, the stripper with the Mensa IQ), and sibling rivalry reaches homicidal intensity. Think Adaptation crossed with Weeds. Will the authors solve the mystery without killing each other first?
Synopsis
New York Times-bestselling author Lisa Lutz conspires with — or should we say against? — coauthor David Hayward to write an original and hilarious tag-team crime novel.
Synopsis
New York Times-bestselling author Lisa Lutz conspires with-or should we say against?- coauthor David Hayward to write an original and hilarious tag-team crime novel. Meet Paul and Lacey Hansen: orphaned, pot-growing twentysomething siblings eking out a living in rural Northern California. When a headless corpse appears on their property, they can't exactly dial 911, so they move the body and wait for the police to find it. Instead, the corpse reappears, a few days riper . . . and an amateur sleuth is born. Make that two.
When collaborators Lutz and Hayward (former romantic partners) start to disagree about how the story should unfold, the body count rises, victims and suspects alike develop surprising characteristics (meet Brandy Chester, the stripper with the Mensa IQ), and sibling rivalry reaches homicidal intensity. Think Adaptation crossed with Weeds. Will the authors solve the mystery without killing each other first?
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About the Author
Lisa Lutz is the
New York Times-bestselling author of the Spellman comedic crime novels. Since 2007, the Spellman series has received Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity nominations, and each title has been a selection of the Indie Next List. Lutz lives in San Francisco.
David Hayward is a writer and editor in Northern California. His poetry has won a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Harper's and other magazines. Hayward has an MFA in poetry from the University of California at Irvine. This is his first novel.