The Hairdressers' Cut — Mike O'Sullivan

THE HAIRDRESSERS' CUT is the first in The Hairdresser Murders Series.

Hairdresser Lauren Canning holidays in Grand Cayman, a British protectorate and off shore financial centre. She and two friends, Zoe and Claire are from Ross on Wye. They are single, in their twenties, looking for adventure and a change for a few weeks from their sleepy Herefordshire existence. Early on in their holiday, Lauren checks out a local hairdressing salon in Georgetown which is advertising a vacancy and as a result is offered a part-time job by the attractive owner Stephen Forbes who is from Leeds. She is immediately offered a competing business proposition by Forbes rival, James Poole, who believes his wife is romantically involved with Forbes. James Poole is a multi- millionaire financier, one of the British tax exiles on the island with friends in the UK Government and the City of London. He offers Lauren the opportunity to set up and manage a new hairdressing salon to put Forbes out of business.

While Poole is putting this proposition to Lauren over dinner in his hotel restaurant, Forbes is murdered at Poole's beach house. Forbes is stabbed in the neck with a pair of hairdresser's scissors apparently while visiting Poole's wife Cindy, a former beauty queen and herself an ex hairdresser from the US. Cindy Poole disappears. Chief inspector Worcester who heads up a new specialised police investigations service based in Hereford is sent to Grand Cayman to help out the local colonial police.