Heads You Lose by Lisa Lutz & David Hayward

Lisa Lutz is one of my favorite writers. She's written a series of books about the Spellman family who are dysfunctional private investigators. (They're great investigators but a crazy family.) This is her first book without the Spellmans. I was reading it to tide me over to her next one.


Her co-writer is a former boyfriend who is also a poet and editor. They alternate chapters throughout. The book is good, and it's funny, but sometimes a little wildly confusing. Sort of like the game you played as kids where one person starts a story, then it goes around the circle with everyone adding on to it. Within the chapters the alternate co-writer leaves footnotes and at the end of each chapter you get to see the notes that they wrote each other on what just happened or what should happen next. The notes get more acrimonious as the book wears on. It all comes together in the end, but you wonder if they were speaking. Apparently, so, because they've done an interview on NPR and are now on a book tour.

The Scent of Rain & Lightning by Nancy Pickard

I can honestly say I had no idea "whodunit" until the author revealed everything near the end. I like that in a book. Partly set in the present day but mostly involving events 23 years earlier, you and the main character try to figure out what happened to her parents when she was a toddler. Her father was killed during a violent storm in a town on the Kansas plains. Her mother (or her body) was never found. When the presumed killer is released from prison after the governor commutes his sentence, their daughter tries to find out what really went on that night. In her small town where everyone knows everything about her it seems as if they all want to protect her, or keep her from digging too deep in the past. It was fascinating. And with all the vivid storm descriptions in the book, I felt like it was raining outside while I read it.

The Guynd by Belinda Rathbone

This book is by an American writer who marries a Scotsman and goes to live with him on his country estate. She vividly describes what a mixed blessing/curse it is to have the land and big house but not the money and servants that it was designed for, and needs to run. My only disappointment with it was that there were no photos. And, I had to go online afterwards to look at that and find out a little more about what happened in the author's personal life. Not only was the house a difficult proposition, the husband was, too. It was like Art's pack-rat-edness multiplied exponentially. Oh, and the title (and house) is pronounced so that it rhymes with "wind."