Title: Missing Mabel (A Curl Up & Dye Mystery #1)
Author: Nancy Mehl
Pages: 249
Year: 2010
Publisher: Barbour Publishing
My rating is 4 stars out of 5.
I have read all of Nancy Mehl’s more recent books and was happy to discover she had written this mystery series earlier in her career. The story is set in Wichita, Kansas in the present. Hilde Higgins is a young, single woman with a very interesting and some might say strange job. She is a hairdresser for the deceased. She styles the hair of dead people before their funeral services. Her mother is not happy with her career choice, especially since she quit college to pursue this job.
Hilde is called to one of the local funeral homes for a job, but accidentally goes into the wrong room to discover the body of Mabel Winnemaker, awaiting delivery to the coroner’s office for an autopsy. Hilde is supposed to dress the hair of another woman. Hilde quickly leaves the room and finds the correct body and proceeds to do her job. A few days later she is called back to the funeral home to dress the hair of Mabel. The only problem is the Hilde has a photographic memory and the body she has been told is Mabel is not the same Mabel she saw a few days ago. She notifies the funeral home owner, but he thinks she has made a mistake. Then, Hilde is accused of stealing an expensive ring from Mabel’s body and Hilde fears her reputation and career will be ruined. She sets out to find out where the real Mabel is and to notify Mabel’s family of the situation.
An old friend contacts Hilde to renew their acquaintance and Hilde can sure use his help to find out what happened to Mabel. Hilde also makes friends with a crusty old gentleman, Gabe, across the street from the boarding house where she lives. They interaction between Hilde and Gabe were just so funny! Those conversations were one of my favorite parts of the book and I hope Gabe appears in the other books of the series. I also liked how Hilde’s faith in God was evident in how she lived her life. Her best friend was not a believer, but Hilde prayed for her and tried to show her the love of God in how she lives her life. Hilde’s renewed friendship with Adam also revealed his faith, which I thought was so important for the beginning of a relationship. I am looking forward to book two in the series, Blown Away. ( )

Just finished reading my first book by Nancy Mehl, Missing Mabel.

I enjoyed it. Light, quick Christian reading. A little mystery, a little romance, some humor. Can't ask for much more.

This is a story about a hair dresser who works with funeral homes to make the loved ones look the best they can before the viewing. She accidently gets involved in a mystery while fixing Mabel's hair and the book concludes with her solving the mystery.

Great job. Looking forward to her next one. ( )

Hilde is a hairdresser who is about to get a huge case dumped in her lap. Now she’s not just any hairdresser, she’s hairdresser extraordinaire to the dead. That’s right, she is the one who fixes the hair before the funerals. But when she mistakenly gets a sneak peek at Mabel, when it’s time to really get Mabel purdied up, something isn’t right. This isn’t the same Mabel as before and then things really start to get weird.

I got this book throughNetGalley. I am loving how many options of reading genres I am able to get through by using this website.

There were things about this book that I loved, like Hilde. She is great. She doesn’t be who people want her to be. She loves her job, who wouldn’t love not being talked back to? Dead people don’t care what their hair looks like. And she’s a reader. I can’t believe how many characters I’ve met recently that are readers. That makes me immediately love them.

I loved Hilde’s personality and her friendships. She is nice to everyone, except her mom. But Hilde has some problems that she can’t quite pinpoint and once she is able to, her mom will be all but forgiven.

Now I know that there has to be other little plots throughout the story, but the ones in this book almost made me forget that Mabel was missing. Although Hilde didn’t spend a lot of time across the street with her neighbor, or out with her new boyfriend, I felt extremely connected to those scenes and those are the ones that I remember the most.

I do give Mehl props because I had no idea who the killer was. But I wasn’t a big fan of the reveal. Hilde has photographic memory, it comes to her and next thing we know, they’re talking about it at dinner and everyone is explaining how it all went down. This was a creative way to get the story told, so I kudos Mehl for that, but it kind of took the blow out of the killer being caught. It was quiet like Mabel, so it fits the book, it just wasn’t what I expected and I had to go back and read it a couple of times because I kept feeling like I was missing something.

I give Missing Mabel 3 bookmarks. Now, there is a second book in this series coming out in February. Since I liked Hilde so much, I will most likely give this series another chance!

This book was released August 1. Order a copy here! ( )