Product Description

Marla is concerned with her neighbour, Goat, is missing. His van is in the driveway; newspapers are piling up on the lawn; and no one's seen him for three days. It's unlike Goat to be so negligent, especially when he has pets in the house. Marla hears strange noises presumably from his menageries, but she's never ventured inside his place. She gets the opportunity when Detective Dalton Vail arrives after receiving a tip that her neighbour's house contains a dead body. Without a search warrant, he won't enter unless invited, and no one answered his knock on the door. Marla forges ahead, pushing inside the unlocked townhouse with Vail at her heels. A foul odour pervades the place, but it isn't from the hungry cats or the goat confined in the backyard. A dead man is sprawled in the master bedroom. While Marla heaves a sigh of relief that it isn't Goat, her expert beautician's eye picks up a clue. Noting the victim's bronze highlights, she relates their distinctive pattern to Cutter Corrigan a master stylist in the area. She surmises the victim might be Cutter's client and, soon enough, heads off to Cutter's to not only solve the murder, but to find out where her neighbour might be.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1894679 in Books
• Published on: 2003-12-01
• Released on: 2003-12-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
With its many loose ends, Cohen's fifth cozy whodunit starring hairstylist-sleuth Marla Shore (after 2002's Body Wave) lives up to its billing as a "Bad Hair Day" mystery in more ways than one. In Palm Haven, Fla., Shore juggles the demands of her salon business with problematic relationships with her mother, her mother's importunate suitor and attractive police detective Dalton Vail. A missing neighbor, a murder victim with a signature highlighting pattern and Vail's official investigation conspire to put Marla on the scent of crimes involving contraband animals, illegal furs and a potion to cure baldness. A bizarre murder scheme apparently aimed at Marla's former beauty-school classmates also figures in the patchwork plot. The supporting characters aren't vivid enough to help carry the story, while the Jewish slang and humor seem forced rather than natural. As a result, the action careens from one improbable happening to another with interludes of romance and comedy that fail to captivate or convince. With Janet Evanovich setting a high standard for screwball mysteries and Sarah Strohmeyer's Bubbles Yablonsky already providing one successfully lighthearted hairdresser-sleuth heroine, Cohen has tough competition and fails to measure up in this outing.
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