Nancy J. Cohen has created the perfect setting and job for an amateur detective to have while trying to solve local crime in a small town. When better to interview suspects than while they are having their hair styled? Marla Vail’s customers at the Cut ‘N Dye salon are always ready to share the news they have heard.
This novel is the newest in the long-running A Bad Hair Day Mystery series. Marla is now married to Dalton, the newly retired police homicide detective. She and Dalton have teamed up to solve crimes in their small town in Florida.
When a diamond studded hairbrush is stolen from the local museum, Marla and Dalton set out to get it back and save the museum from having to close down. Marla is asked by her friend Becky Forest, the curator for the local museum, to fill in at the last minute as a featured speaker for a fundraising event and Marla agrees; this puts her and Dalton at the scene of the crime. The antique hairbrush, an heirloom with a family curse, is stolen during the opening night event and the injured security guard is sent to the hospital. When more unexplained accidents start occurring to people involved with the museum, Marla is not convinced it is the curse. She is sure someone is behind the unpleasant problems. Then another security guard turns up dead, and the pressure to find out who stole the hairbrush and return it to its rightful owners increases.
An added characteristic to this mystery series is that Marla is Jewish. She enjoys Jewish holidays and Jewish foods; she follows the traditions of her childhood and wants to teach them to her children. In this novel, the winter holidays are just around the corner. As she interviews suspects, Marla also thinks about her holiday parties and gift lists. She has to pick out Chanukah and Christmas presents for her new extended family, along with procuring the latkes and donuts for her son’s daycare class’s Chanukah party.
Just as Marla’s styling expertise lightens her customers’ moods, so too her caring, nurturing personality endears her to the reader. This mystery is both entertaining and heartwarming.
