Blog Tour and Giveaway- Hide Nor Hair by Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa

Happy Tuesday! I'm thrilled to be part of this blog tour. Hide nor Hair by Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa is a great read. Click on the rafflecopter for a chance to win. 

Hide nor Hair
by Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa

Hide nor Hair
(A Jersey Girl Cozy Mystery Book 2)
File Size: 2625 KB
Print Length: 187 pages
Publisher: Cup of Tea Books, an imprint of PageSpring Publishing (April 21, 2015)
ASIN: B00THGQ6II

Synopsis

For this Jersey girl, big hair means big trouble!

Newspaper reporter Colleen Caruso just wants her unruly curls tamed into smooth, sleek locks. Instead, she finds her stylist dead, face down in a shampoo sink. Faster than you can say Aqua Net, Colleen starts investigating. The case gets even hairier when the owner of a local fitness studio seems to have jumped from a plane … without a parachute.

Meanwhile, her suave editor, Ken Rhodes, steps in to help.  And he may be looking for more than just a good story from Colleen.

Add in a missing bracelet, some suspicious husbands, and a little breaking and entering—and this Jersey girl is heading for a real blowout!

Can Colleen tie up these split ends? Or does she have an appointment with disaster?

My Review:

A charming whodunit with a cast of characters so well developed and a story line that will keep you reading til the end. When Colleen's hair stylist is killed she wants nothing more than to find out who did it and why. Colleen is witty and fun and you will be pulled in from the start. Kept my interest and I'm eagerly waiting for the next book to see what Colleen will get her self tangled in next.

Guest Post:

It’s a thrill to be here at Shelley’s Book Case today, and special thanks to Shelley Giusti for allowing me to visit.

For those who are not familiar with my Jersey Girl Cozy Mysteries, Hide Nor Hair is the second book in the series and features the unstoppable Colleen Caruso, a newly divorced mother of two who tries to scrape by on a reporter’s meager wages in the fictional shore community of Tranquil Harbor, New Jersey. She tends to fumble her way through a hot story, gets in way over her head as she researches and investigates for her regular crime columns, and generally comes out nearly unscathed as she tracks down leads. Her day to day life can best be described as what her boss and current love interest, Ken Rhodes, calls it – an ongoing slapstick comedy.

As a panelist at the Deadly Ink Mystery Conference, I was asked why I felt the need to make the characters in my series funny in light of the seriousness of the crimes. I took that to mean: Why write a cozy?

We all agree crime in itself is a serious business. Murder is – well, deadly serious. I try to approach crime as a reader who loves those stupid crook stories. Of course, with my series you can add stupid reporter into the mix.

The series is light-hearted, as cozies should be. But the best part of sinking your teeth into almost every cozy series is for the fun of it.

EXCERPT FROM HIDE NOR HAIR AT THE WAKE OF A MURDER VICTIM

He had come up beside me, and I hadn’t noticed. “She’s beautiful,” I said quickly. “But Dizzie was a pretty girl anyway. I’m so sorry, Matthew. We’ve never met. I should introduce myself. I’m Colleen Caruso. I, um . . .”

“Found the body?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Must have been quite a shock for you,” he muttered. “But she sure looks good now, right?”

Almost lifelike, I thought, but didn’t say. I wasn’t going to be a complete dolt. Besides, I had a mission to accomplish.

“Her hair is lovely,” I told him. “They do fine work here.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

I pretended to brush a small strand of Dizzie’s hair off to the side of her face. Someone called to Matthew, and he excused himself. I looked behind me. There was nobody waiting to view the body. I leaned in again and reached out to Dizzie’s head to part her thick, coarse hair. Her scalp, unfortunately, was too dark to show whether there were bruises from someone’s hand forcibly holding her head down. I dug my fingers in a little deeper and began to part various sections of hair more toward the crown.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” a voice behind me whispered.

I whirled around, both startled and embarrassed, to find Ron Haver standing there with a half-grin on his face.

“I was fixing her hair,” I lied.

   “Who do you think you’re fooling, Colleen? Look what you did! It’s like you’re examining her for head lice . . .”

Hide Nor Hair isn’t peppered with humor, it’s more salted. It’s that way with most of the writers I love to read as well – Susan Isaacs and Janet Evanovich, just to name two. I’ve always written from the humorous side and find serious fiction just a little bit boring. Life is funny, especially here where I live in Central Jersey. My friends all say and do shocking things (because I was raised in New Jersey, I’m guilty of this too), my neighbors cajole and banter, my relatives are a scream (my apologies to the relatives who are visiting this site, but you are all a bit off-the-wall), and even the people I see on the job or meet as I go about my errands are wry and outrageously opinionated. If we can’t appreciate our own sick sense of humor and the over-the- top humor of those we know and love, where is the joy in life?

Why shouldn’t fiction, a reflection of day-to-day life, be at least equally funny? It should be, which is the reason we are so in love with cozy mysteries.

About This Author

                 Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa lives in Old Bridge, New Jersey, and uses her experience as a freelance correspondent as the basis of her protagonist’s career. Several of the incidents within these pages are actual occurrences. They have been shamelessly embellished and are not a blow-by-blow account of a few really bad days on the job. Hide Nor Hair is her second novel.

Author Link:

www.joannlamonreccoppa.com

Purchase Links:
Amazon Kobo
(Barnes and Noble link will be available on April 21)

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