Publisher Description
Hairstylist Marla Shore is drawn into a culinary caper that includes murder, sabotage, and fowl play in this delectable cozy mystery.
When hairstylist Marla Shore volunteers for Taste of the World, a fundraiser for her cousin’s favorite charity, she quickly discovers that mixing scissors and sauté pans can be a recipe for disaster. First Chef Pierre's rum-soaked Bananas Foster erupts in his face. Then more chefs drop from the roster like overcooked soufflés and the nonprofit's attorney becomes the victim of fowl play. It’s clear as a consommé that someone is stirring up trouble. With a cunning killer on the loose, Marla has a lot more to worry about than which canapés her chefs should serve.
She teams up with Detective Dalton Vail to untangle the clues. He believes someone from the nonprofit’s board of directors might be involved, but Marla has her own suspicions. As she digs deeper, she realizes their upcoming gala could be more perilous than a hot stove. She’d better sift through the suspects to stop the saboteur before the entire event goes up in flames.
Nominated for a Reviewer's Choice Award by RT Book Reviews
“Curl up with Nancy Cohen’s stylishly witty and chillingly suspenseful tale of murder on the Florida coast—Hair Raiser is a cut above.” Joanne Pence, author of the Angie Amalfi Mysteries
“Hair Raiser kept me guessing until the very end. Hats off to Nancy Cohen and her engaging sleuth, Marla the hairdresser!” Laurien Berenson, author of the Melanie Travis mystery series
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An engaging, busy plot drives saucy beautician Marla Shore's second outing (after 1999's Permed to Death), set in Palm Haven, Fla. When Marla assembles 10 local chefs to cook for a gala benefit to save a pristine beach property from commercial development, the chefs start enthusiastically but nasty accidents soon cause them, one by one, to withdraw. Sabotage isn't out of the question, since the board members of Ocean Guard, the preservation group sponsoring the benefit, are all at each other's throats. When someone bludgeons the board's lawyer to death with a Samoan knife belonging to a banker on the board, Marla goes to the Bahamas to look for answers, taking malicious pranks and even murder attempts in stride with all the panache of a grown-up Nancy Drew. At times Cohen overwrites, especially when describing her characters' reactions ("Marla gazed into Babs's frantic hazel eyes and her mouth curved upward"; "His face wore its usual supercilious grin as he peered at her, hazel eyes raking her attire"), but there's no reason why a good editor can't curb such excesses in future Bad Hair Day episodes. Marla's romance with police detective Dalton Vail continues to thrive, and should be a major focus for fans in the next installment. A bold pink jacket perfectly complements the text.
