Someone hadn't been too pleased she was home, safe and dry. Someone who didn't wish her well.

I love a good cozy mystery and am always up for reading them so I was excited when I was approved on Netgalley to read this book. Unfortunately for me I had problems with this from the beginning. Between a main character that I didn't like, typos and errors throughout the book, and a predictable mystery this book is not high on my list of favorite cozies.

 

From the start I didn't really like Marla. In the beginning she kept mentioning some incident from her past (going on and on about it) without really going into detail. Once it was revealed what happened I did understand why she was still so traumatized. I didn't like how she kept budding in on the investigation. At times it felt like she was bumbling about. Honestly the answer to the mystery was right in front of her face and the fact that it took her so long to figure it out didn't really help me like her all that much. 

 

I was wary about this book after I read the first chapter and there were more typos than I would have liked to have been in a whole book. One specific typo that I noticed a lot was "die" being substituted for "the." It was a bit confusing at first but then I got used to the typos. This could have used more editing.

 

Altogether this was a bit of a disappointment. The answer to the mystery was so obvious that I felt certain that I was just being lead to believe it and that there would be a big twist at the end but to me there was no twist. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the galley.

Well I have finished the first chapter and I am already a bit annoyed with this. The main character, Marla, keeps referring to an incident that happened in her past but she won't say exactly what happened (she keeps going on and on about it but revealing nothing). She is now about to go do something really stupid that obviously will end up backfiring. I have also found some typos in the first chapter (more than I would have expected to have been in just one chapter). I love cozy mysteries and am going to try to keep an open mind while reading this.

NO stars! Couldn't even finish it!

To be honest, I had not intended to read or review this title because prior to finding it, I had not heard of the Bad Hair Day Mysteries. I was at the library searching for the first book in the Jesus Creek stories by Deborah Adams and, coming up empty, started eyeballing the book spines emblazoned with the skull icon to differentiate the mysteries from everything else. I found Permed to Death, natch, in the Cs, and immediately picked it up. How could anyone resist such a title?

This is, according the author's bio, the first published volume of a series starring Marla Shore, a South Florida hairstylist living happily alone (for the most part) despite the loud wishes of her mother and would-be suitors that Marla return to the dating scene. In this debut, Marla is seeing to regular customer/nag Bertha Kravitz who dies mid-perm from poisoning. Turns out Marla keeps a special stash of coffee creamer for Mrs. Kravitz in the salon and it is discovered to be tainted; clearly somebody wanted to cream more than coffee with it.

Thus, Marla instigates her own investigation to clear her name -- seeing as how Detective Vail is ready to arrest her based on opportunity and lack of witnesses, she did buy the creamer, you know -- while also seeking to destroy some evidence that would definitely give Marla a motive as well. Marla hints often at this blackmail package Mrs. Kravitz had held over her in exchange for free 'dos, and I long figured it out before the nature of the evidence was revealed. Getting said material back from Bertha's whiny, conceited, and/or sleazy relatives and associates proves to be a pain.

As far as the mystery goes, Permed to Death has its fun moments, particularly when Marla interacts with various supporting characters, yet reads a bit long. Though I could not immediately pick up on the murderer as other readers of this novel claim to have done, I got the feeling Marla didn't exactly make any shortcuts in her sleuthing. Her relationship with the cynical Detective Vail, in particular, comes off as awkward -- it appears as if Marla's primping for this man's visits and cursing him in the same breath. I'm reading this book and wondering to myself if Cohen was trying to introduce some sexual tension or to get us to believe that Marla and Vail would eventually become a couple. I didn't see some of the things Vail said and did in this book as typical of a true homicide detective.