Haircuts and Harassments

Jonathan Reeves has been cutting hair on the same stretch of a Hawaiian island for sixteen years. He knows which of his clients is leaving her husband in the spring, whose permit is stuck at the county and why, and which men on that side of the island have never once faced any consequences.

There is nothing sinister in it. It is the oldest information system in the world, and it runs in every salon in America.

When a name reaches his chair from three different directions, Jonathan does something about it.

He is careful, he is unhurried, and he is very good at his trade -both of them. He is not angry. He has no cause and no grievance. He could not tell you when a name stops being information and becomes a task.

Then a detective who has been in his chair every eight weeks for eleven years starts bringing her work to her appointments.

A novel about a man who describes a killing and a color correction in the same voice, at the same level of technical detail - and about the machinery already running, unaudited, in every room where somebody is having their hair done.

Jeffrey B. Mahoney lives in Ohio with his family. Haircuts and Harassments is his sixth novel.