Monday, May 4, 2015

Virtual Tour & #Giveaway for Hide Nor Hair by Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa


Welcome to my stop on the Virtual Tour, presented by Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours, for Hide Nor Hair by Jo-Ann Lamoon Reccoppa.  Please leave a comment or question for Jo-Anne  to let her know you stopped by.  You can enter Jo-Anne’s tour wide giveaway, for one (1) of three (3) ebook copies of Hide Nor Hair, by filling out the Rafflecopter form below.  You can also follow all of the stops on Jo-Ann’s  tour by clicking on the tour banner above.  The more stops you visit, the better your odds of winning. My review will post later this morning.



Murder Before It’s Official by Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa

Curly-haired newspaper stringer Colleen Caruso has her work cut out for her in Hide nor Hair, the second book in my Jersey Girl Cozy Mystery series. Her dreams of super straight hair are shattered when she discovers her stylist drowned in a shampoo sink filled to the brim with water. Colleen reports the drowning in her crime column without speculating about how something such as this could possibly occur. In her heart, she knows her hairdresser was murdered, but she can’t state the death was a homicide without the official medical examiner’s report, which can take anywhere from a day to weeks to release. In the interim, the reporter needs to come up with some kind of scenario that could explain the circumstances of the woman’s death, if only for her own peace of mind.

So the question stands: what if the hairdresser wasn’t murdered? How could such a tragedy happen?

Writers have wild imaginations. Unfortunately, we also have to conform to the real world. When I murder someone in one of my books (only in books – I’ve never personally killed anyone yet), I like to create an unusual death. Sometimes the death can look like an accident, especially when the body is first discovered. This really gets my juices flowing. How could someone drown in a shampoo sink filled with water? Can that really happen?

The answer, of course, is yes. There are several interesting ways those shampoo sinks in your local beauty parlor can be lethal. Here’s a for instance – the sink fills when the drain is accidentally plugged up and the water is left running. The hairdresser kneels on the chair in front of the sink to reach something on a shelf behind the sink. She could have a heart attack or a stroke and fall face-first into the sink, or even hit her head on a lower shelf as she reaches for something higher up, and plunge headfirst into the water. The stylist might lose her balance while kneeling on that cushiony chair, slip, and whack her head on the sprayer, knocking herself out cold. She could even try to unclog the drain and smack her head on the faucet in the process. But there was no blood in the water, and no obvious wounds on the stylist’s head. She didn’t have any bumps, lumps or skin discolorations either. So maybe the poor gal did have a stroke after all. Maybe not.

First glance observations that the death was murder is even more fun. Obviously, if you walk into a beauty parlor and find your stylist bent over a shampoo sink filled with water, it’s easy to assume the thirty-pound concrete block holding her head down below the water line might point to homicide. If there is no cement that’s just there for the weight, the water splashed all over the shelves, the floor, the other sinks, and each and every chair at the shampooing stations would be signs that the hairdresser struggled with someone and did not wish to be drowned.

In Hide nor Hair, Colleen’s stylist did not wish to be drowned. Drowning was done to her, forced upon her, and meant as a way to end the woman’s life. And Colleen does write about the non-accident, announcing to her little town that this was, indeed, a murder.

She just has to wait until it’s official!

Hide nor Hair
By Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa
A Jersey Girl Cozy Mystery, Book 2

Publisher: Cup of Tea Books, an imprint of PageSpring Publishing
Release Date:  April 21, 2015
Genre:  Cozy Mystery/Female Sleuth
Book Length: 187 pages
ISBN: 9781939403346
ASIN: B00THGQ6II

Buy Links:  Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo 



About the book:

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?


About Jo-Ann Lamon Reccoppa

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:


a Rafflecopter giveaway

3 comments:

  1. Good morning and thanks to Queen of All She Reads for hosting today. Thanks also to Great Escapes, and best of luck to everyone who enters the giveaway.

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  2. I'm sorry, had to laugh at the image of the stylist drowned in the sink. This sounds like a fun read and a new one for me. Thanks for the giveaway.

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  3. Good luck with the giveaway Grandma Cootie!

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