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    Heads You Lose
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    Heads You Lose
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    Heads You Lose
    Audiobook9 hours

    Heads You Lose

    Written by David Hayward and Lisa Lutz

    Narrated by Abby Craden

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    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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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 5, 2011
    ISBN9781101484388
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Heads You Lose

    3.5/5

    222 ratings52 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Cute. Have not read the Spellman Files (same author) might look into them.
    • 2/5
      A collaborative effort in which the story and the history between the authors were both part of the plot. I got tired of the one-upsmanhip between the writers and stopped paper way through.
    • 5/5
      I really loved this. There's 2 stories going on here - the co-authors (and exes) are writing every other chapter and then there's the actual fictional story they are composing together. With occasional footnotes and letters back and forth after each chapter, the whole thing is pretty funny. One author loves a character a little too much, so the other kills them off - in one case to be resurrected again by the other. Then there's the cat. Anyway, the story itself would be pretty lame without this humorous framework of the co-authors. But knowing these characters are doing things to spite the other author and that it ends up being a bit of a farce of bad whodunit movies absolutely makes it worth the read.
    • 5/5
      Laughing Out LoudI've been trying to review this book in a more sophisticated way than my initial response ("OMG, so funny!!!" does not really constitute a proper review). Few books make me laugh out loud in a "the guy next to me on the plane keeps looking at me like I'm nuts), but there wasn't much breathing room between bouts of cracking up as I read HEADS YOU LOSE. The premise is brilliantly metafictional and the execution flawless. Lisa and David are supposedly former romantic partners who have decided to collaborate on a mystery novel. Since they don't get along, their method of collaboration consists of alternating chapters. In between chapters, their email exchanges are included. It's hard to decide which is funnier; the increasingly messy murder mystery as the writing turns from collaboration to competition/revenge, or the hostile e-mail jabs between the co-authors (Lisa reminds David that he wouldn't be publishing a novel without her name THAT BIG on the cover; David mocks Lisa's grammar and word choice). The mystery begins with siblings Lacey and Paul finding a headless body on their property. Since they grow marijuana, calling the cops is not an option, so they move the body...and it comes back. The metastory begins in such a polite, civilized e-mail exchange, swiftly switching to pointed criticism (ostensibly of the written work, but clearly about their relationship issues) and outright hostility. The characters and plot of the novel suffer (to hilarious effect) from the co-author bickering. During one chapter, I laughed so hard I cried. Trust me, while the whole novel is funny, you'll know when you get to this particular chapter, a response from David to Lisa's exasperation with the unnecessary big words he throws around). Recurring disagreements are brilliantly teased out as Lisa kills off David's favorite character and David refuses to provide any explanation for a plane crash early in the novel. The characters snipe at each other in eerie echoes of Lisa and David's issues, and serious disagreements on the plot make for an increasingly bizarre novel-within-a-novel.This books is funny. Go read it.Source disclosure: I received an uncorrected proof courtesy of Penguin Group.
    • 3/5
      Once upon a time Lisa and David were an item. A thing. A couple. Now they're not. But they are still friends, mostly. One day Lisa has an idea: Why don't I send David this first chapter of a crime novel and propose a collaboration? He's a poet, so he could certainly use the money he'd make by collaborating with me, the bestselling author of the Spellman Files novels. So she did, and they did, and Heads You Lose is the result. There were a few ground rules. They would communicate only in writing, they would write without an outline or foreknowledge of what the other was going to do, and they wouldn't edit each other's work.Gimmicky? For sure. A bit precious? Without a doubt. Hilariously funny? You betcha.So here's the story, as outlined in that very first chapter. Lacey and Paul Hansen are twenty-something siblings, orphans, who live in Northern California on the property they inherited from their parents. There they have a small but moderately lucrative pot growing operation. Lacey, taking the trash out after losing a coin toss one evening, finds a headless body on the front steps. As they're packing the body up to dump it off the property--hey, they'll be good citizens and put in an anonymous call to the police...but they sure can't have the cops stomping around the grounds now, can they?--Lacey recognizes the body's watch. It belongs to her ex-boyfriend.The story gets weirder and more and more convoluted as the two writers work hard to make each other sweat, introducing new characters out of left field and plot twists that make even the reader wonder how the next guy's going to make it work. The comic mystery that ensues is surprisingly effective if completely off the wall. Each chapter is footnoted with snarky comments from its reader, and is followed by a back and forth of letters between Lutz and Hayward. Ultimately, although this work is novel as novelty, it also serves as a kind of post-modern/absurdist commentary on contemporary genre writing and its plethora of factory-style collaborations (James Patterson, Clive Cussler, and Tom Clancy--cha-ching!--come immediately to mind).
    • 2/5
      I didn't think this was a particularly smart crime book and found the authors' banter tiresome. I didn't empathize with any of the characters.
    • 3/5
      Adult mystery/comedy of writers. This is more of a story of collaborating writers/exes than it is a cohesive mystery novel, but it had its entertaining moments. Not a favorite, but a decent read.
    • 2/5
      I liked the concept and I understand why this was not edited, but it was too hard for me to get into.
    • 4/5
      Lisa Lutz decided to co-write a mystery with her former boyfriend. This ends up being a story-within-a-story since there's the mystery and in between their notes to each other. The competition over who gets to write the last chapter and what they do to each others characters makes for a very funny book.
    • 3/5
      I felt that the book was a little gritty. Also, the emails between the authors, which were inserted in the book was a unwanted interruption. But, overall I enjoyed the book.
    • 4/5
      An epic, blood-soaked battle between two writers. Also there's a mystery story.
    • 3/5
      Sometimes the back-and-forth between the co-authors was funny and interesting, but after a while it wore on me and was just annoying. When characters keep changing their, well, character, it's really hard to figure out who's who, let alone relate to them.
    • 4/5
      Heads You Lose is written by two authors who used to date each other, had a bad break up, sort of despise each other, but wrote a murder mystery together anyway. The story itself was so-so, but the interaction between the two authors and the sabotaging of each others' characters and story lines is comedy gold.
    • 4/5
      Witty and fun, with a nice dash of intrigue.
    • 4/5
      Well some how they tidied it all up and even through in an interesting ending to boot. It was a great break from the intense Scadinavian mystery novels I usually read.
    • 5/5
      Laughing Out LoudI've been trying to review this book in a more sophisticated way than my initial response ("OMG, so funny!!!" does not really constitute a proper review). Few books make me laugh out loud in a "the guy next to me on the plane keeps looking at me like I'm nuts), but there wasn't much breathing room between bouts of cracking up as I read HEADS YOU LOSE. The premise is brilliantly metafictional and the execution flawless. Lisa and David are supposedly former romantic partners who have decided to collaborate on a mystery novel. Since they don't get along, their method of collaboration consists of alternating chapters. In between chapters, their email exchanges are included. It's hard to decide which is funnier; the increasingly messy murder mystery as the writing turns from collaboration to competition/revenge, or the hostile e-mail jabs between the co-authors (Lisa reminds David that he wouldn't be publishing a novel without her name THAT BIG on the cover; David mocks Lisa's grammar and word choice). The mystery begins with siblings Lacey and Paul finding a headless body on their property. Since they grow marijuana, calling the cops is not an option, so they move the body...and it comes back. The metastory begins in such a polite, civilized e-mail exchange, swiftly switching to pointed criticism (ostensibly of the written work, but clearly about their relationship issues) and outright hostility. The characters and plot of the novel suffer (to hilarious effect) from the co-author bickering. During one chapter, I laughed so hard I cried. Trust me, while the whole novel is funny, you'll know when you get to this particular chapter, a response from David to Lisa's exasperation with the unnecessary big words he throws around). Recurring disagreements are brilliantly teased out as Lisa kills off David's favorite character and David refuses to provide any explanation for a plane crash early in the novel. The characters snipe at each other in eerie echoes of Lisa and David's issues, and serious disagreements on the plot make for an increasingly bizarre novel-within-a-novel.This books is funny. Go read it.Source disclosure: I received an uncorrected proof courtesy of Penguin Group.
    • 2/5
      Twenty-something siblings Paul and Lacey Hansen cannot risk the authorities learning that they are illegally growing pot and so cannot call the police when a headless corpse shows up in their yard. So they hatched a plan and dump the body off a hiking trail and wait for the police to discover it. Believing that the corpse is Paul’s friend, Darryl, they are stunned when Darryl turns up alive and well. So who is dead? And when they discover that the body is not where they left it, they have no idea where to find it. And that is just the beginning of things that suddenly go wrong . . . .Although the idea having two authors write alternating chapters in a story, the result here is problematic at best. Readers are likely to find it difficult to relate to either the characters or the plot when each chapter ends with the two authors trading comments and barbs about the preceding chapter. Any continuity the story might have that had is lost when the reader is pulled out of the narrative to read one author’s comments about the other’s work in the chapter they’ve just finished.Oftentimes the banter between the two authors feels antagonistic and the ongoing contretemps serves as a sort of retribution as each one creates dastardly happenings for the other’s favorite characters. Readers expecting either a taut crime novel or a witty narrative are bound to be disappointed with this clunky tale.
    • 5/5
      REVIEW: Heads You Lose Note: This review originally appeared in The Season E-Zine's April mystery section.Heads You Lose by Lisa Lutz and David HaywardBerkley (300 pages)April 5, 2012Rating: 4.5/5 (Amazing) (The Season's rating scale now runs from 1 to 5.)For fans of: Christopher Moore, The Coen Brothers, and Dave BarryOrphaned twenty-something siblings Paul and Lacey Hansen lead a pretty quiet life. Or rather, they led a pretty quiet life – until the decapitated corpse showed up in their backyard.Most people would probably call the police if something like that happened to them. Then again, most people don’t have a marijuana farm located in their basement. So Paul and Lacey do what any two rational, legally challenged people in their situation would do: they relocate the body under the cover of darkness and leave it for somebody else to find.That should be that. But then the (ever ripening) dead body reappears in front of their house, and Paul and Lacey are forced to admit that this is a situation they’re going to have to face head-on…As you may have gathered from the above synopsis, Heads You Lose is a murder mystery. What you may not realize, however, is that it’s also the tale of two exes (crime novelist Lisa Lutz and poet David Hayward) collaborating to write a murder mystery. When they started the project, the pair agreed to alternate chapters (with Lutz writing the odd-numbered chapters and Hayward writing the even) and to refrain from doing any outlining whatsoever. That, it turns out, is all they could agree on, as is evidenced by the hilariously antagonistic e-mail exchanges between the authors (featured at the end of each chapter), the sniping editorial footnotes the two append to each other’s work, the fact that Lutz takes great delight in killing off all of Hayward’s favorite characters, and Hayward’s attempt to paint Lutz into a corner before leaving her to write the final chapter. If the Editor’s Note is to be believed, when the book was finished, the authors refused to come together on revisions, so the manuscript was published in its original form. As the Note says, “[w]hile unorthodox in structure, it is nevertheless a novel. It just happens to tell more stories than either author intended.” Indeed.This is a book that succeeds on every level. Yes, the attempted collaboration between Lutz and Hayward is endlessly entertaining; watching the two of them battle for control over the novel will fill you with a perverse sort of glee, and every time you stumble across an in-story pot-shot, you’ll feel like you’ve just won a game of literary Where’s Waldo? But the mystery they’ve crafted is incredibly compelling, as well. I mean, okay, the plot is wild and woolly and takes more turns than a driver at Indy, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t work. For all their literary shenanigans (and the resulting epically high body count), the characters are incredibly well developed, there’s a very clear through-line to Lutz and Hayward’s story, and the ending is nothing short of genius. Read this book. Do it now. And prepare to enjoy the hell out of the experience.
    • 5/5
      Paul and Lacey Hansen are brother and sister. They live in Mercer. Population 1, 280. Paul and Lacey were flipping a coin to see who would be taking out the trash. Lacey lost. While taking out the trash, Lacey stumbles upon a headless body. Usually in this type of situation, someone would call the police but there is just one problem…Lacey and Paul are the main marijuana suppliers in town. So this leaves only one other option…dump the body. Things are fine until the body reappears. Paul and Lacey are on the case.Heads You Lose is a rip-roaring, hilarious collaboration by Lisa Lutz and David Hayward. I am a huge mystery fan. I am a huge mystery fan. I am always looking for how an author is going to try to do something different or put a new twist on these types of books. There is only so much you can do like revealing the identity of the killer or how to kill someone off. So when I read Heads You Lose, I was pleased to see that this book was not in the traditional format of a mystery novel. This book was unique, in the sense that you got to read the author’s thoughts about each other’s chapters. This book got funnier and funnier as I was reading it. The jabs that the authors took at each other were flipping comical. Heads You Lose will have you looking at crime, mystery novels in a whole new way.
    • 2/5
      I love the books of Lisa Lutz, but this one didn't do much for me. A wonderful premise that didn't quite keep my attention.
    • 4/5
      A friend recommended I read this darkly and deeply comic mystery when I was having a run of blue days. It has taken me longer to finish it that I might have liked, but every time I came back to it I knew I'd put it down again laughing.

      Lisa Lutz and David Hayward are the contentious co-writers of a whackadoodle romp through the whole co-authorship phenomenon. (Really... when did Patterson last sit down all by himself and write a novel? Or are some of these name-brand mystery series just Hardy Boys for grown-ups?)

      Each of them writes a chapter, sends it to the other, and not only are we privy to an increasingly muddied mystery (each writer has their own favorite suspect, on whom they cannot agree), we also get a tantalizing peek into the defunct personal relationship the two of them had by way of their exchange of margin notes and cover letters.

      Perfect for when you want something different!
    • 2/5
      It was really hard to decide who to focus on, the authors or the characters. There were so many points where I mostly just wanted to get on with the story and not have all the author commentary, but then there were a number of points where the footnotes and plot twists of one author in response to the writing/actions of the other were definitely chuckle-worthy. I enjoyed getting to see the authors' frustration with events in the previous chapter take shape in the narration. Overall, though the authors childish bickering and antics were mostly just distracting.(x-posted on Goodreads)
    • 2/5
      I was excited about the premise of this book, but it has not been a good read. I have to agree with another reviewer that said that this should have been two separate books. The back and forth between the authors kept me from being able to feel involved with the actual story. I've been trying to skip the authors' notes at the end of each chapter, but I can't keep myself from reading them. Ok, the second half is not as bad. Unfortunately, it takes half of the book to get interesting.
    • 4/5
      Always wondered how co-authors collaborated together on a book. In this case, each author wrote a chapter and then handed it off to the other author (along with side-splitting snarky notes). I'm not sure which made me laugh more the author's notes or their increasingly competitive and punishing chapters :-) It's been a long while since I've read a book which had my husband asking (repeatedly!) what are you laughing at? Yes, I did indeed laugh out loud throughout this book :-)
    • 4/5
      Loved this book. I have enjoyed the Spellman series so thought I might enjoy this. The main "plot" is a series of murders that take place in a small California town--and 2 pot growing siblings (brother and sister)who get tangled up in the investigation of the murders. Though the main plot was interesting the best part was the interaction between the two authors. This book was a collaberation between Lisa Lutz and former boyfriend David Hayward. The comments that they make on each others chapters are hilarious--as well as their reaction to the comments in their writing of their chapters. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      What a unique little gem of a book! This novel was extremely playful with its language and it seriously augmented my vocabulary. I didn't even know some of these words existed before reading them (mostly in David Hayward's chapters) - for example: caliginous (misty, dim; obscure, dark) and asperous (rough; uneven). There were hilarious messages between the authors separating the chapters. They were honestly my favorite parts of the book...personal anecdotes that eventually erode into bitter (and funny) banter. After Lisa's many complaints over David's pretentious vocabulary choices he cleverly disrespects her in Chapter 14...I literally laughed out loud. Also, there are footnotes throughout the story (inserted by the other co-author) that kept me snorting with amusement. Such a fun and quirky book!
    • 1/5
      Notes between authors were stupid and added nothing to the story but to make the authors look petty. Mystery wrap up was lousy. One of those books that you can't believe got printed.
    • 4/5
      This book was fun. I don’t know what I enjoyed more, the twisting story (some on purpose, some sabotage) or the bickering in between each chapter (and sometimes in footnotes at the bottom) by the authors. These were fun, believable characters (if sometimes 2 dimensional) that everyone has meet at least one example of in their life. I have lived in a small town, and couldn’t help but picture it as I read this story. As outlandish as some of the things that happened in the book were, there were many I could see happening. I really liked both Lacey and Paul, I never really found myself taking sides. I found myself wanting to support them and strangle each of them in equal measure. Like many mystery main characters, they both did some stupid things. If you are an author this book is worth the read for the twists and turn the authors throw each other, and how they try and out write each other. A great summer read. =D
    • 4/5
      Heads You Losestarts with a very clever idea: crime novelist Lisa Lutz asks ex-boyfriend David Hayward, a published poet, to collaborate on a mystery novel with her. Lisa writes the first chapter and sends it to David; he writes the second chapter and sends it back. They alternate, odd and even chapters, and manage to write a funny, interesting crime novel with some great twists and turns. The story is good, but the interaction between the two co-authors (their footnotes on each other's chapters and their emails between chapters) is better.They had a few simple rules:"Lutz would write the first chapter and all odd-numbered chapters thereafter. Hayward would write the even ones. They would not outline or discuss what they were working on. Each author would read the other's chapter 'blind.' Neither author was allowed to undo a plot development established by the other."I think Lisa cheated on that one a little.Paul and Lacey Hansen are siblings sharing a home in rural Northern California. Their parents were killed in a freak accident and currently they make their living growing and selling pot. So when a headless corpse is dumped on their property, they can't really risk calling the sheriff. They move the body, they wait for someone to find it, and someone does -- Lacey, a few days later, dumped in their driveway. And she may know who it is.It's a great beginning! It's got all kinds of possibilities. You could really plot a terrific mystery from a lead-in like this. Of course, our collaborators aren't plotting much of anything -- they write a bit, hope the other follows their lead (they don't) and then the fireworks start.Our authors bicker like siblings. By the beginning of chapter eight, they are sniping about a road trip to Reno a decade earlier and when they should have stopped for gas on the drive into the desert. They fight about vocabulary, they fight about plot points, they fight about who is the more accomplished writer and they are not above threatening each other's favorite characters to make a point. If David wants to hang onto Paul's stripper girlfriend and Irving, the cat, he had better stop threatening Doctor Dreamy! The bodies are starting to pile up.The mystery is fun (I think Lutz and Hayward are both good writers, even if they don't think much of each other), but it is interesting to read it knowing they are truly making it up as they go along. They obviously identify with the siblings and are living vicariously through them -- sometimes to great comic effect. A clever, original idea and very well executed.
    • 3/5
      Fun, but not as fun...as the Spellmans.