Highlights to Heaven (Bad Hair Day Mystery) [Mass Market Paperback]

Nancy J. COHEN (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2004 | Series: Bad Hair Day Mystery

Professional hair stylist and amateur sleuth Marla Shore lands a case close to home when her pet loving neighbour, a man aptly named Goat, disappears, leaving his animals and a dead body - behind. The corpse might be just another anonymous stiff except for the distinctive highlighting in his hair. Marla immediately recognizes the signature technique of Ft. Lauderdale's Heavenly Hair Salon and the work of stylist Cutter Corrigan. Curiosity - and a desire to impress sexy Detective Dalton Vail - motivate Marla to question the proprietor of Heavenly Hair before the police do. And before she even leaves the murder scene, Marla makes another a grisly discovery that suggests the killing involves the exotic pet trade, where fancy fur coats are illegally made from local Tabbies and Rovers.

Editorial Reviews

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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Full of twists and turns, great characters, and an interesting setting. Who could ask for more?"

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Kensington Books (November 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0758200714
• ISBN-13: 978-0758200716
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #578,706 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #90 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery > Series

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Horrible, September 1, 2010

By 

A. Bishop "Verity" (Harrisburg, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Highlights to Heaven (Bad Hair Day Mystery 5) (Paperback)

While there are some books that just don't fit your taste, this book goes well beyond. There are plenty of synopsis on previous reviews, so I won't rehash that here. In several spots, grammatical errors were not corrected, the plot has so many complications, it can't keep track of them, and the romance is awkward and shoved together. This reads like a poorly written first draft, not a published novel. I saw the ending coming from the first chapter.

Add to that the author maligns homosexuals with her stereotypical descriptions and determination to make them the bad guys.

I have no idea how this kind of tripe gets published, but highly recommend trying out some other cozy mystery -- not this one.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars God Awful, January 14, 2005

By 

A Reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Highlights to Heaven (Bad Hair Day Mystery) (Mass Market Paperback)

Usually when a series starts out bad, it can only get better. Unfortunately, this series keeps getting worse.

There were so many things going on in this book that it was hard to keep track of them all -- a murder in a neighbor's home, an incident between neighbors, animal cruelty, illegal fur business, exotic bird trade, competing salon owners, baldness, citrus canker, teenage angst, bad deeds from the past. Way too much to keep track of.

Marla never learns her lesson and keeps putting herself into stupid, dangerous situations. Her cop boyfriend does nothing to discourage her from involving herself in his cases other than shaking a finger now and then, but yet he turns around and tells her that the case is "our case." Cops do *not* encourage civilians to get involved in their investigations, particularly a civilian as stupid and careless as Marla.

After she finds out about two hairdressers being killed, Marla thinks she went to school with one and doesn't recognize the name of the other. After she goes to her beauty school and finds out they were all classmates, we suddenly learn that the three, along with two other students, were part of a tight "gang" who hung around together and basically ruined another student's life. So why doesn't Marla recognize the name of someone she was supposedly so tight with? That really lost me.

This author has enough trouble trying to write mystery -- the last thing she should do is try to add romance. There's really no chemistry at all between Marla and Dalton, and her attempts at writing romance for them come off as juvenile and amateur. On one page, Marla is fretting about their differences and how a relationship between them won't work, then on the next page she's discussing the changes she'd make to his decor if she moves in with him. No consistency and certainly nothing about these two that makes you want to read about them having a meal together (which will, of course, be filled with leers and attempts at sexually suggestive comments and feelings) much less living together.

This author really needs to go back to writing school, because she's a textbook for "How To Get Your Novel Published." There's no red, yellow and blue in Marla's world -- only crimson, lemon and azure. Clothing, table settings, meals, cars, everything is described in painstaking detail to the point where you end up skimming over paragraphs at a time. And, in addition to the very annoying "Bless My Bones!" and random Yiddish phrases, we're now also treated to "Holy Highlights!" throughout the book. What is this, Batman?

Anyone who lives in South Florida knows that Palm Haven is really Plantation -- it's silly to try to invent a town when you're specific enough to tell us that someone is driving down Nob Hill Road to get onto I-595. Why the author felt the need to invent the name of the town is beyond me, since a large portion of her reading audience is local.

Yet another poor effort by a very poor writer.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reminiscent of Evanovich... fun read., February 22, 2004

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Highlights to Heaven (Bad Hair Day Mystery) (Hardcover)

If you want a mind-candy read somewhat reminicient of Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, you'll enjoy Highlights To Heaven by Nancy J. Cohen. This is part of her "Bad Hair Day Mystery" series. The main character, Marla Shore, is a south Florida Jewish hair stylist with her own salon, and she finds herself in the middle of crime investigations, much to the dismay of her love interest and police dectective Dalton Vail.

In the latest installment, her strange neighbor (nicknamed "Goat") has gone missing. When she goes over to investigate with Vail, they find a dead body, a stash of cash, and no Goat. Shore recognizes the highlighting style on the dead guy, and asks some questions of the stylist who did the work. Things start happening quickly at that point, and it seems to tie back to her styling school days when a group of her friends played a joke on another stylist who lost his hair in the process. All the friends are being killed off, and Shore narrowly escapes death a couple of time. A few unexpected plot twists brings the story to the typical life or death climax at the end. And as a subplot throughout the story, Shore's relationship with Vail advances forward to the next major stage... moving in.

This isn't deep thought-provoking material. It's a light story with interesting characters, and it's the exact type of recreational read that I often look forward to.