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Overview
It doesn’t help that her name’s Bubbles. Or that she’s a gum-snapping hairdresser with Barbie-doll curves pinched into hot pants and a tube top. Or that she’s saddled with a sleazy ex-hubby, a precocious daughter and a shoplifting mother. What can a beautician do to add new highlights to her image? For starters, trip over a corpse, and implicate a wealthy town socialite in the crime. Now, with a well-muscled photographer by her side, Bubbles is playing star sleuth. But as the investigation unravels, her shining moment grows as dark as a shopgirl’s roots. However dangerous her new career, at least the hottest graduate of Two Guys Community College is finally busting loose—and this time she’s really giving Lehigh, Pennsylvania something to talk about.
Sarah Strohmeyer won the 2002 Agatha Award for best first mystery for Bubbles Unbound.
Synopsis
Sarah Strohmeyer has captured the hearts and funnybones of millions of fans with her spunky Bubbles Yablonsky mysteries. A curvaceous hairdresser with an outrageous wardrobe, Bubbles also freelances as a journalist. But when she links a murder to a wealthy socialite, she becomes the target of powerful people who will do anything to cover up the crime.
Romantic Times - Tara Gelsomino
Whether she s dealing with her Kool-Aid haired and combat-boot-wearing daughter, her sleazy wannabe of an ex-husband and his witchy new trophy wife, or her gun-totin mother (who clearly learned from Grandma Mazur), Bubbles is effervescent and entertaining.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Dying old ladies' hair blue at Sandy's House of Beauty has never been enough for hometown girl Bubbles Yablonsky. So she's taking her big hair and her big dreams back to school to study journalism, and taking advantage of some on-the-job training at the local newspaper. But when Bubbles trips over a crime scene on the way home from an assignment, she finds herself up to her roots in a nasty murder investigation. It could be the big break she's been waiting for-if she doesn't get sidetracked by her lowlife ex-husband, her teenage daughter, or her gun-toting mother, who has just escaped from the Polish Old Folks Apartments.Tara Gelsomino
Whether she’s dealing with her Kool-Aid haired and combat-boot-wearing daughter, her sleazy wannabe of an ex-husband and his witchy new trophy wife, or her gun-totin’ mother (who clearly learned from Grandma Mazur), Bubbles is effervescent and entertaining.— Romantic Times
Publishers Weekly -
Meet Bubbles Yablonsky, beautician-reporter-sleuth and blazing star of Strohmeyer's entertaining, establishment-bashing debut as a mystery writer. Like the mills that gird the book's seen-better-days steel town of Lehigh, Pa., the city is itself a seething cauldron. Battle lines are sharply drawn between the haves and have-nots. Bubbles is hell-bent on getting even with the overlords, especially her former husband, a heel who has gone over to the other side. Opportunity knocks when Bubbles incriminates a wealthy socialite in a brutal murder and then uncovers a murky past, where corpses are littered around the accused's steel-magnate husband. The going is never easy, as Bubbles faces more perils than Pauline: falling off a bridge in the arms of a potential suicide; dodging drive-by gunmen and car bombers; being handcuffed and fitted for cement boots; and always searching for a better way to display her cleavage. Armed with her certificate from Two Guys Community College, abetted by a quirky array of social castoffs and fueled by Doritos, Velveeta and Diet Pepsi, Bubbles overcomes every obstacle on her way to shaking the foundations of the corporate world and, in the process, leaving more than a few wrinkles in her ex's tailored Brooks Brothers suits. Hop in the Camaro and buckle up: Bubbles is behind the wheel, and a wild ride awaits. Agent, Heather Schroder at ICM. (Mar. 19) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.Library Journal
Bubbles Yablonsky, a 34-year-old hairdresser/divorcee, may dress and look like a blonde Barbie-doll bimbo, but she aspires to a more brain-intensive job as an investigative journalist. She grabs her main chance when she and a hunky but elusive photographer named Stiletto discover a dead body--along with the apparent perpetrator, who is drunk and just happens to be the antidrug-crusading wife of a local steel magnate. Suffice to say, Bubbles's revelatory story causes endless repercussions. A sexy, irrepressible heroine, riotous supporting characters, continual action, ubiquitous humor, and even a makeup tip or two make this a highly recommended series debut. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.From The Critics
Ten years ago in Lehigh, Pennsylvania, hair stylist Bubbles Yablonsky did the hair of cheerleader Laura Buchman on the day the police allege the latter committed suicide. Unhinged by the event, just ask her customers whose scalps turned beet red, her boss sent Bubbles home early where she saw her "Dan the Man" with another woman. Dan left Bubbles and their daughter behind to marry an heiress. Bubbles has attended almost every course offered at the community college so that Dan can pay the bill even if she flunked everything she has taken. Now Bubbles tries journalism, a word she never heard of before, and likes the class and her on-the-job training at the News-Times. When no reporter is available to cover a story about a school teaching father apparently about to commit suicide, Bubbles gets the assignment. Working with photographer Steve Stiletto, Bubbles investigates a murder that includes much of the local elite as suspects. If she succeeds and lives, maybe she no longer will have to do blue dye jobs, but then again this is Bubbles and she better not give up her day job. Bubbles Unbound is a humorous cozy starring a plum of a character whose philosophy on life will keep readers wanting to know more about her. The story line centers on Bubbles' first major investigation while struggling with ways to torture Dan and dealing with her gun carrying mom's great escape from the senior citizen crowd. Cozy mystery fans will bubble over the lead character's amateur investigative skills (or lack of) along with the Kool Aid hair dye and other home remedies.Kirkus Reviews
In an era of pluckier-than-thou females, a nitwit heroine could be a welcome change. Enter Bubbles Yablonsky—a breath of fresh air, most of it between her ears. Bubbles has all the requisites: a working-class pedigree, a mountain of debts, an overbearing mama, a rebellious teenaged daughter, and an obnoxious ex. And, because she had the foresight to get knocked up at the tender age of 17, she's still on the sunny side of 40, with golden blond locks and a drop-dead gorgeous figure. But when it comes to supporting her loyal family, Bubbles's gig as a hairdresser just doesn't cut it, and she's already flunked every course but one at the local community college. Journalism's her last chance, and so desperate is she to snag a job at the Lehigh News-Times that she allows the night editor to send her out to cover a would-be suicide at the Fahy Bridge. Naturally, Bubbles manages to knock him from his precarious perch, and naturally, she also manages to rescue him. But on the way home, she and sexy photographer Steve Stiletto run across an even bigger scoop: a body in the park, flattened by an SUV. At the wheel, passed out drunk, is Merry Metzger, wife of steel magnate Henry Metzger, pillar of Lehigh society, and president of the local MADD. Bubbles can't wait to file her story. The only problem: the Range Rover, Merry, and Stiletto have all disappeared. More irony and less spandex would make Strohmeyer's new sleuth better company.Book Details
Published
March 1, 2002
Publisher
Penguin Group (USA)
Pages
352
Format
Mass Market Paperback
ISBN
9780451205445