Read Books This will provide a list of the books I've read with a brief review. Users are blocked, contact me for access. I welcome discussions, but I'm tired of spam.

This book is different from others in the series. This is evident starting with the author’s forward, not from Laurie King, but from Mary Russell. In it, she warns that the events of the manuscript my seem incredible, and suggests that the reader can disregard the events. I presume this means the events in this book will not be referenced in future books.

The first portion of the book adds to the confusion. The story is about a director making a film about an acting troupe that is producing The Pirates of Penzance, and during the play, they have an encounter with real pirates. So, we have actors playing actors playing actors, actors playing pirates, actors playing actors playing pirates, producer, actor playing producer, and more confusion.

Laurie King does sort this out early and gets on with the plot. sort of. the mystery never really develops much, the book is more an adventure of the actors, and Mary’s adventures with the troupe.

The book is fun and witty. It stands on its own within the series, it isn’t necessary to know the characters or events from earlier books. Too much is left unexplained to make a good mystery, but does make a good adventure story.

For the first portion of this book, it felt like a rehash of old jokes from the previous novels. However, once the Pirate Captain gets entwined with Karl Marx, the book really picked up.

In this adventure, the pirates explore London and Paris in disguise and the Pirate Captain gets an opportunity to show his expertise in the French language. The Pirate Captain manages to land an endorsement from Perkin’s Gentlemen’s Pomade which provides him with ample supplies of the pomade. The book explores pirate philosophies as Karl Marx and the Pirate Captain get involved in a philosophical competition, and the captain gets to share his wit with the elite Frenchmen.

All jolly fun, but someone is trying to sabotage Marx’s reputation and discredit him. So the adventure takes a turn.

This is a great adventure and a quick read.

Heads You Lose tells the story of Paul and Lacey Hansen. They are pot grower who find a headless body in their yard and are afraid to call the police. So they move the body, but it turns up again. They begin their investigation involving some odd characters in a small town.

The characters personalities change from chapter to chapter, events happen out of the blue, and it is otherwise a disappointing mystery.

But that isn’t what the book is about.

The book is about the authors. Formerly a couple, who decided to co-auther a book. They are strictly hands-off for what the other person creates, well, sort of. The rules are they alternate chapters and do not undo or strongly change what the other has written. But they threaten each other, they mess with each other’s characters, and the banter makes the book!

Each chapter indicates which author wrote that chapter, a saving grace! I constantly referred to the header to see whose chapter this was, the writing author was in a normal font, the other was slightly grayed.

Each chapter ends with a letter from the chapter author and a return from the other. The authors leave footnote comments on the other’s work. This is what drives the book. This is the real plot. It is funny, occasionally laugh-out-lout hilarious. The book is worth the read and is time well spent.

Ironically, it also feels like the book could have been a lot more. After finishing, I don’t feel like these authors have much more to offer, the material was covered and its done.

Heads You Lose is still a good book and well worth the read.