A BAD HAIR DAY

A second tangled tale set in New Orleans and narrated by beautician Claire Claiborne, owner of the plush Eclaire (Behind Eclaire's Doors, 1993). Claire's mentor, Marcel Barrineau, is promoting a highly publicized Bad Hair Day to repair salon and self-inflicted hair damage, and Claire is there, along with some of the city's top hairdressers, clients, and hangers-on. There's a lot of gossip about the recent wave of vandalized salons and the gruesome murder of Lochner Smith, effete owner of a chain of shops and of an elegant house furnished in museum- quality Art Deco. Claire's assistant, Renee, is with her—depressed and strangely short of money. On hand, too, are Marzipan Jones and others from Gino's Emporium, a supply house; Babs Hooper and her weirdo son Lamont; Duchess Crowe, owner of a glitzy nightclub complex, with Tom Toy, leader of her newest rock group, whose ex-love Vicky Su is working on Duchess's hair. The frantic goings-on are being filmed by Charlotte Dalton of WBGZ under the direction of station manager Harry Corvus, an English expatriate. It's Lamont who discovers Duchess dead under her hair dryer—poisoned. Police detectives do their thing, but the answers lie in a video left by Lochner with his lawyer—answers concerning dark deeds of the past mixed up with drug-dealing, blackmail, and bizarre relationships. The author laces her story with fanciful names, sophomoric raunchiness, outlandish characters, designer labels, and a mess of subplots. Spottily entertaining, but in need of severe thinning and shaping.