Perish by Pedicure — Nancy J. Cohen

Fire up the flat iron and break out the bullet-proof blow drier, because Marla Shore--the sassy, South Florida beauty salon owner with a knack for fixing hair and finding trouble--is back. Now, just as her fiance Detective Dalton Vail's famously uptight former in-laws are descending on her equally famously chaotic home, Marla is up to her roots in a big-time beauty show that could make or break her in more ways than one...

Perish By Pedicure
Beauty shows are known for a lot of things: glitz, glamour, products, catfights, very big-bordering-on-scary hair "creations", and some equally oversized egos. What they're not usually known for is cold-blooded murder, but that's exactly the case when Luxor Products company director Christine Parks is found dead in her hotel room--facedown in a foot bath. And suspect number one is Marla's college roommate, Georgia Rogers. It was Georgia who got Marla the job working behind the scenes at the beauty show. The least Marla can do is try to clear her name.

One thing is clear: Christine Parks didn't make many friends. Everyone who worked with the miserable woman had a reason to hate her. From serial cheating to indulging in blackmail, threats, lawsuits, bad investment advice and worse, she was a walking Bad Hair Day, and the list of possible suspects is longer than a pop diva's hair extensions. The questions swirling through Marla's expertly coiffed head are pure chaos: Who hated Christine strongly enough to kill her? Did someone slip her poison at their company cocktail party? And is it possible that Dalton's ex-in-laws could be more annoying and disapproving?

Dealing with her own domestic crises is going to have to take a back seat to solving a crime that's getting more complicated--and deadlier--by the day. When a model with top-secret information for Marla turns up dead at the Russian baths, things go from bad to worse in a hurry. Behind the thumping house music and dazzling, high-platform hair tricks of Florida's hottest beauty show, something very ugly is going down, something that goes beyond polish and style to the dark heart of corruption, greed, and killer-takes-all ambition of the beauty biz. And if Marla isn't careful, she just may end up on the wrong end of a murderer's very skilled hands...