Amazon.com Review
There's a good reason for the name of Daria Dupree's hair salon--Killer Looks. All of the stylists, including Daria herself, are convicted murderers who have served their time and are now trying to make new lives for themselves. Seventeen-year-old Barrie Dupree isn't thrilled by the prospect of staying with her ex-con mom while her dad and his wife spend a year in Europe, but she tries to make the best of a bad situation. She writes stories in her ever-present notebook and earns money at her mom's salon to buy the vintage paperbacks she immerses herself in at the local used bookstore. "After a week of hair chemicals, Barrie always prescribed for herself the blood-cleansing aroma of old books." When two of the salon's wealthiest customers are murdered, Barrie's settled routine is disrupted. Immediately, suspicion falls on Daria and her staff. Barrie is sure they are not to blame and begins to do a little sleuthing. Meanwhile, Daria must deal with escalating acts of vandalism. When Barrie discovers a forgotten receipt and combines that with the slip of a book clerk's tongue, she thinks she may have discovered the killer. But will Barrie be the next victim?
Marsha Qualey, author of the riveting Thin Ice, has written another absorbing mystery for young adults. Her plot is fresh and original, with none of the tired teen-mystery stereotypes. Barrie and her mother are certainly no Nancy Drew and beloved dad! By adding Barrie's fractured relationship with her mother to the mystery stew, Qualey has ensured that this story will be gobbled up by more than just genre readers. (Ages 12 and older) --Jennifer Hubert
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Anxious to start a new life after serving a 15-year prison sentence, Barrie's mother opens a beauty parlor with some of her ex-con friends, all of whom have done time for killing. Business booms at Killer Looks until the husband of a client and then another customer are brutally slain in their fashionable homes. Is one of the employees responsible for the crimes? While the police piece together clues, Barrie and her mother are terrorized by an angry citizen (or is it the real killer?). Their house is vandalized. Their shop is burned and Barrie has the feeling she is being stalked. Less taut and cohesive than Qualey's Thin Ice, this whodunit is too cluttered with peripheral social issues. Barrie's relationships with "lost souls" (former street people), shelter residents and an elderly couple who run a failing used bookstore are too conspicuously worked into the plot, dividing the novel's focus and diffusing its suspense. The heroine's feelings toward her "killer" mother are ambiguous at best ("Not that Barrie had ever decided if her mother was, technically speaking, a murderer"). Most of the time, Barrie seems quite comfortable?almost chummy?with her mother, but she periodically expresses deep resentment at being dragged away from her father and stepmother (who are spending the year in France). As in the author's previous novels, outward appearances are deceiving, but this time around, the final unveiling of truth is a letdown. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
