Heads You Lose

This is a thoroughly odd book, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's a mystery, set in a small town in northern California. A brother and sister in their twenties are living in their late parents' house and growing weed for a living when a headless corpse is dropped in their backyard. They can't call the police, due to the basement full of plants and grow lights, and so a merry round of hide-the-body begins.

The gimmick is that it's a collaboration between Lisa Lutz and David Hayward. The claim is that they write alternate chapters, can't discuss an overall outline, and can't change each other's chapters. Oh, and they used to be romantically involved. Before each chapter, there's an email from the author who wrote the last chapter, and a reply from the one just starting the new chapter. They start arguing almost immediately, and the story is complicated by the way they kill or humiliate each other's characters.

It's meta-squared.

It's pretty fun. I was genuinely curious about how the mystery was going to wrap up, and interested in what they were going to pull on each other next.