Beauty Salon owner Marla Shore is more than a little upset when one of her customers, Bertha Kravitz, dies after drinking coffee containing poisoned powdered creamer. Not only is she afraid she'll lose her customers, but the police, especially Detective Dalton Vail, seem to think she's the murderer, since she was the only one with Bertha when she died and Marla is the one that gave her the coffee. Marla is afraid that the police will discover that she had more than one reason to kill Bertha and not look for the real murderer, so she begins to investigate the case herself. Marla finds lots of suspects - Bertha wasn't a likeable person and had many enemies - but she needs to convince Detective Vail. In the meantime, as she investigates the murder, she also has to confront a few demons of her own - a tragic death in her past, a foolish mistake when she was young, and a failed marriage.

"Permed to Death" was a disappointing mystery. Marla was an unsympathetic and unlikable character, far too judgmental and abrupt with people. Even the tragic accident failed to make her sympathetic, perhaps because it was mentioned too often in the book. Her dwelling on people's appearances, especially their hair cuts, was mean spirited and got old very quickly. She's also not one of the brightest characters ever written - Bertha dies from poison and yet, when someone anonymously leaves Marla a box of candy, she almost eats it! The other characters don't come off much better and Marla's friend Tally, with her obsession about food, is especially obnoxious. Detective Vail is also poorly written, asking Marla out when she is still the chief suspect and he even takes her along with him to help investigate the murder - truly unbelievable. As for the mystery itself, while there are plenty of suspects in Bertha's death, it's pretty easy for readers to narrow down who the murderer is.

While I liked the beauty salon setting, "Permed to Death" was not a great mystery.

This is the worst book I have read in decades. In fact, the best part is the title. I had tossed it aside only to pick it up again because I could not believe it was really as bad as it seemed. I was right the first time. The lead character (a hair salon operator named Marla Shore) is a suspect in a murder case that happened in her salon. Naturally, she decides she has to solve the mystery herself for two reasons: 1) since it happened in her shop it is her responsibility to find the killer; and 2) to show the hunk detective she is innocent. The first premise is stupid on it's face, yet upon this fragile hook hangs most the plot. The second premise can work if you are professional burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr in the hands of a master like Lawrence Block. In the present book with the present author a snowball's chance in Hell comes to mind. The book lacks charm, humor, cleverness, credibility, subtlety, cohesiveness, and worst of all - mystery. Marla, the only character of any depth at all (if a combination of extreme guilt pitted against sloganeering qualifies as depth) lurches through the plot in a series of unlikely actions driven by apparent studpidity. If she acted like she had half a brain then the rest of the book wouldn't need writing. If you can get past the contrived situations you then endure the unlikely/never gonna happen quality of the conversations/interrogations. If these fail to turn you to a better use of time the subtle as a brick clue to the murderer near the beginning of the book should. The rest is one long misdirection highlighting choppy writing about Marla's interactions with 2-dimensional, stereotyped characters in unlikely situations, all fleshed out with irritatingly irrelevant details. Thank God I got this out of the library and didn't waste any money on it. Is it possible to give it less than one star?

this series is a cute fun read.
Light hearted and good charaters round it out.

This book was so bad that I just had to warn others before wasting their brain cells on this junk. (Unfortunately, this was the only thing I had available to read that the time.) This novel is supposed to be a "mystery" but I found the outcome ridiculously predictable. The author probably believes she is dropping "hints" but blatantly casts suspicion on other characters, leading the reader to easily guess her "least obvious" suspect as the actual murderer. Give the reader a little credit! We've all read books before!

The interaction between the main character, Marla, and Detective Vail, is so predictable I almost threw the book away in lieu of staring at a blank wall. This is a plot we've all read before, only it was actually good when Janet Evanovich used it in the Stephanie Plum novels. In reality, this whole novel seemed like a rip-off of Evanovich's books, but without the charm and creativity. Furthermore, the italicizing of anything in Yiddish or trying to make characters seem hip or young by using the phrase "like" is completely ineffective, and becomes extremely annoying. And the wanna-be catch phrase "Bless my bones?" Is Marla 75 years old? There are so many annoying details from this book that Cohen seems to use only to make the text longer, but the reader couldn't care less about. And with such mind-numbing attention to irrelevant details, the wardrobe descriptions for the characters must be picked apart. If this was written in 1999, Cohen must have been using a Sears catalogue from 1983 as a reference, because who the heck wears a "yellow shorts outfit" or a "pearl gray jumpsuit?" (Cohen also later gives a step-by-step description of how Marla prepares dinner. I almost thought I started reading a cookbook!) These drawn out descriptions and details are used in a way that they are unnecessary to the development of the character, except to make me wonder if Marla the hairdresser still gives people mullet haircuts since she's apparently stuck in a time warp.

The novel is dull and any "mystery" is completely obvious. (For example: Marla's secretive past? I had that one figured out the first time it was mentioned.) Save your money and don't buy this book. Instead, spend your cash on Janet Evanovich's "One for the Money." You'll be glad you did.

I saw this mystery in the store and thought: "hey, this looks good". I thought it would be fun and interesting - neither which turned out to be true. The story was dark and depressing and the mystery annoying and convulted. Marla must be the stupidest so-called sleuth in the history of dumb sleuths if she didn't figure out the killer until the end. The clues were so obvious it was painful to watch her stumble around. I had to force myself to complete it.

I had to feel sorry for Marla at one point where the detective ripped her to shreds for her past - I would have slapped him and hard! Too bad she forgave him when he smiled at her.

Bogus! 2 stars is being too fair.