Heads you lose

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Heads you lose

Title:

Heads you lose

Author:

Lutz, Lisa, author.

Hayward, David, 1970-

Summary:

Paul and Lacey Hansen, orphaned, twenty-something siblings running a marijuana farm in rural northern California, find a headless corpse in the field, and obviously unable to call police, decide to move the body only to have it show up again several days later and much worse for wear. Written in alternating chapters by former romantic partners Lisa Lutz and David Hayward, with notes they exchanged during the novel's development.

Audience:

Adult Follett Library Resources

Physical Description:

300 p. ; 24 cm.

Genre:

Humorous fiction.

Detective and mystery fiction.

Subject Term:

Novelists -- Fiction.

Siblings -- Fiction.

Authorship -- Fiction.

Author(s):

Hayward, David, 1970-

Publisher:

G. P. Putnam's Sons,

Publication Date:

2011

ISBN:

9780399157400

Publication Information:

New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons, c2011.

Call Number:

LUTZ

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607002572959	Adult Fiction	LUTZ	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

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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Author Notes

Lisa Lutz was born in Southern California in 1970. She attended the University of California at Santa Cruz and at Irvine, the University of Leeds in England and San Francisco State University, but never earned a bachelor's degree. In 1991, the aspiring screenwriter began the script for a mob comedy. After more than a decade and 25 revisions, the film Plan B starring Diane Keaton, Paul Sorvino and Natasha Lyonne was made, but only received a limited release. She decided that writing screenplays wasn't for her and she turned to writing fiction. Her debut novel, The Spellman Files, won the 2008 Alex Award and has been optioned by Paramount. Her works include the Izzy Spellman Mystery series and Heads You Lose with David Hayward.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

In this experimental California improv, Lutz (The Spellman Files) writes odd-numbered chapters and footnoted barbs directed at her coauthor and ex-boyfriend, poet Hayward, whose even-numbered chapters and stiletto-sharp ripostes add a freaky dimension to the collaboration. Grown siblings Lacey and Paul Hansen are scratching out a precarious living from a Northern California clandestine marijuana operation when a reeking headless human body turns up in their backyard, eventually identified as Hart Drexel, detecting barista Lacey's former lover. Because Lutz and Hayward agreed not to discuss or to undo a plot development the other had produced, they create a jittery black-comic narrative complicated by inter-author tensions unveiled in memos exchanged at the end of each chapter. Shifty secondary characters, some charming, some odious, pop in and out of the resulting dizzying plot that comes off like a trendy Left Coast restaurant melange-daringly composed, exotic to contemplate. Author tour. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Review

With a flip of the coin, Lacey becomes the unlucky Hansen sibling taking out the garbage. Finding the headless body? That makes a dirty job even worse. Paul, Lacey's brother, doesn't care where the head went or who might have left the body in their yard. He wants to keep the police away from their home, site of their modest but still illegal pot-growing business. Mercer, CA, is a small town, but the list of possible victims and perpetrators is long and grows longer as the (heads attached) body count rises. Two original, quirky stories packed into one book? What an awesome bonus for fans of Lutz's Spellman series (The Spellmans Strike Again). One story line tells how Lutz and her ex-boyfriend began writing this novel in alternating chapters, even though they've had a rocky personal relationship over the years. The other is the murder mystery, and readers clearly see how rising tensions between the authors affect their writing. Verdict Clever, witty, and smartly turned out, this novel should be savored from the editor's letter to the final page, or readers will lose out on a big piece of this humorous puzzle. [See Prepub Alert, 10/25/10.]-Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.