Book Review: Heads You Lose by Lisa Lutz and David Hayward

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Comedy keeps you laughing as the authors duel over story

Cons: Story and characters suffer from the fights, but it works in the end

The Bottom Line: 

A different read

You must be ready to laugh

Or you won't get it

Heads You Lose Laughing

I've been a fan of Lisa Lutz's quirky Spellman Files series since the first book came out.  While classified as mystery, I view the series as more of a dysfunctional family comedy.  After four books in that series, Lisa decided to do a stand-alone and pursue a real mystery.  Well, she succeeded at doing a stand-alone, but I'd be hard pressed to call the result, Heads You Lose, a real mystery novel.

See, Lisa got ex-boyfriend David Hayward to write it with her.  As a gimmick (or a challenge or a game), the two would write alternating chapters.  Lisa started the story and wrote the odd numbered chapters while David wrote the even numbered chapters.  They didn't outline.  Each had to work with what had come before, even if they didn't like it.  In between each chapter, there are e-mail exchanges between them that help shed some light on the creation of this novel and the power struggle that would go on behind the scenes.

The story they tell involves Lacey and Paul Hansen, grown orphans who live in a small town in Northern California.  The two support themselves by growing and selling pot, although Lacey wants to find a way to leave town.  One night, the duo finds a headless body on their property.  Since they don't want the police nosing around their place, they move the body, only to have it show up again.  Who is the victim?  And why does someone want the Hansens involved in the investigation?  As the bodies start piling up, they'll have to work fast to solve this case.

Now, if you sit down looking for a serious crime novel, you will be sadly disappointed.  The plot wanders all over the place.  One plot development is all but ignored (except in passing to great comic effect).  Entire sub-plots develop and are resolved while little happens with trying to find the person behind the headless corpse.  Having said all that, I found the climax logical and satisfying, so the story does ultimately work.  But if I were reading it as a straight mystery, it would have frustrated me.  Heck, a few times characters state stuff that wasn't true 75 pages ago.

Likewise, the character development is...interesting.  While Lacey and Paul are pretty consistent, the secondary characters are pretty fluid depending on who is writing the chapter.  Some of the characters take twists as bizarre as the plot by the time it is all over.  Not to mention again things treated as fact about characters that weren't when they were first introduced.

Maybe it was because of all these inconsistencies, but I just couldn't stop laughing at the book.  The e-mail exchanges between the authors grow increasingly heated, and their shots at each other in those and the chapters are a riot.  Once again, Lisa is treating us to a dysfunctional relationship, only this time it is hers.  (Of course, having seen them both at a book signing, I can't tell how much of that is real and how much if put on for comic effect.  That was the same way I felt after reading the book.)

This is not a book to be taken seriously.  If you do, it will frustrate you to no end.  I guessed going into it that I would need to leave my normal expectations for a mystery at the door and just go with the flow.  Since I did that, I was able to enjoy the quirky gimmick and laugh at the result.  I got a couple of strange looks while reading this book; I just couldn't help laugh at what was happening on the pages.

So, if you are looking for something quirky and different, Heads You Lose is perfect for you.  If you want a straight mystery novel, don't even bother.  This will frustrate you to no end since it is anything other than a traditional mystery.  And there seems little middle ground.  From those I've talked to, people either love it or hate it.