2011 book 85

Lisa Lutz and David Hayward's Heads You Lose
I LOVE Lisa Lutz's Spellmans series, so of course I picked up her new, non-Spellmans book immediately. Descriptions indicated that it was co-written by another author, and is about a brother-sister pair of pot growers trying to solve the murder of a decapitated man who shows up on their property. Except the first thing you read is an editor's note explaining that Hayward is actually Lutz's ex-boyfriend, they alternated chapters, and increasingly snarky and angry letters between the two follow each chapter. The editor's note goes on to say that neither the chapters nor the letters have been edited in any way. I have no idea how real this is or if it's an experiment in meta-fiction, but either way it's damn entertaining. It's a study in hilarious passive-aggressiveness, with plot points designed to annoy the other author (one footnote reads: "We both know you're doing this just b/c you know I hate cat mysteries"). I can't think it's entirely accurate--what kind of writer starts a mystery without knowing who the killer will be?--but as an experiment in storytelling--and as a story about storytelling--it works really well. I giggled a lot. A.