Review: Styled for Murder by Nancy J. Cohen

 

About the Book

Genre

Cozy Mystery

Format

E-ARC

Publisher

Orange Grove Press

Release Date

November 16, 2021

Synopsis from Goodreads:

A dead body in her mother’s bathroom during a home remodel leads hairstylist Marla Vail to flush out the clues and nail the killer.

When hairstylist and savvy sleuth, Marla Vail, gets a frantic call from her mother that there’s a dead body in her shower, Marla realizes this wasn’t part of the home renovation plans. The victim turns out to be the project manager, who had an untrustworthy reputation in town. Disgruntled customers, unpaid suppliers, and the design company’s staff are among the suspects. Which one of them wanted the foreman to pipe down about their shady dealings?

Meanwhile, the lead investigator sets his sights on Marla’s stepfather, Reed, who’s keeping secrets from his family. Reed has a past connection to the victim and won’t come clean about what he knows. As Marla drills deeper, she’s showered with suspicions, but nobody’s willing to leak any information. She needs to hammer down the prospects, or time will drain away and the murderer will strike again.

To flush out the culprit, Marla taps into her pipeline of resources. Can she assemble the clues and demolish the alibis to nail a killer? Or has someone designed the perfect murder? Recipes Included!

My Review

Marla Vail is shocked to receive a call from her mother.  During some renovations in her home, a man is found dead.  The police have their eyes on one person as the culprit and it’s Marla’s step-father, Reed.  The victim is the man in charge of their home renovations, which haven’t been going smoothly at all.  The police are sure Reed got fed up with all the delays and killed the man in a fit of rage.  Marla and her mother are just as sure that Reed is innocent and Marla will prove it.

Although Marla’s husband is a detective, this murder is out of his jurisdiction.  They don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, but they also don’t want to see Reed go to jail for something he did not do.  As they conduct their own investigation, they discover that the dead man had plenty of enemies.  Any one of them could have done the deed.  They just need the evidence to prove it.

This is the 17th book in the Bad Hair Day Mysteries and they keep getting better.   It’s a fast-paced mystery that I found totally captivating.  There were so many culprits to choose from.  I picked two and neither one was the guilty party.  LOL  I didn’t put it altogether until near the end when Marla figured it out.

I’ve read this series from early on, so it’s a total joy to watch Marla go from a single woman to a wife and now a mother.  I feel as if she’s an old friend.  There aren’t any cliffhangers and the mystery is solved within this book, but it’s still so much fun to start this series from book #1.

A fun, light-hearted mystery set in Florida is a fun escape from reality.  I enjoyed every minute of it.

For reading challenges:

Craving for the Cozies Reading Challenge 2021

FTC Disclosure: I voluntarily reviewed a free Advance Reader Copy of this book from the author and the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review.  All opinions expressed are my own.