Death Under the Dryer (Five Star First Edition Mystery) (Five Star Mystery Series)

When Carole goes for a hair trim at 'Connies Clip Joint', she doesn't expect to find herself at the scene of a murder. But sure enough in the backroom, strangled by the cord of a hairdryer, sits Connie's young assistant, Kyra.

Whilst Carole and her sleuthing friend Jude enjoy some tactical snooping, Fethering fingers are pointing firmly at Kyra's boyfriend, Nathan, who has disappeared. But Nathan's family are also acting rather oddly - whilst convinced of Nathan's innocence, they don't seem so certain that he is actually missing.

Meanwhile Connie's ex-husband Martin, co-owner of the rival hairdressing chain 'Martin & Martina', appears to have been quite the ladies' man with his young assistants, including Kyra herself. Could he have silenced her before she divulged his sordid secret and potentially ruined his career?

As our discreet lady detectives decide there are only so many haircuts they can have for the sake of neighbourhood crime solving, so too do they realise this is no cut-and-dried case, and that some people will stop at nothing to keep their private lives concealed ...

The popular and prolific Brett takes us into the world of cut, color and curl in his witty eighth Fethering cozy (after 2006's The Stabbing in the Stables). Carole Seddon needs a haircut: exactly the same, just shorter. She risks going to a salon in her small English town of Fethering, only to witness the discovery of the assistant, Kyra, strangled in the back room with evidence of a tryst all around her. When Kyra's secret boyfriend, Nathan, becomes the suspect, but his parents aren't worried, Carole decides the local constabulary needs help from her and her next-door neighbor and sleuthing partner, Jude. Brett perfectly describes the mannerisms of stuffy upper-middle-class Carole slowly letting her hair down; the odd, arty insouciance of Nathan's academic family; and anyone else who comes within range. This funny and intricately plotted story brims with affection for the affectations of our favorite Fethering friends. (Aug.)
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Brett is a master of satiric social commentary. His brilliant Charles Paris mysteries dissected the backbiting world of TV, radio, and stage. His current run of cozies set in the quiet West Sussex village of Fethering sometimes suffers from fustiness but still is strong on Brett's forte of skewering social pretensions. In the latest Fethering, the stage set is a hair salon, which Brett reveals as part psychotherapist's office and part cabaret. A young salon assistant is found strangled to death with the cord of a hair dryer in a High Street salon. Fortuitously, Carole Seddon (a fiftyish retiree from the Home Office with a penchant for stumbling onto murders and then solving them with her neighbor Jude, a New Agey, blowsy type) comes in for a cut and leaves with a mystery. The duo pursues leads from Fethering to Cornwall. The plot meanders, but Brett's scathing asides are worth it. Fletcher, Connie