No Offense Intended [Paperback]

Barbara Seranella (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2006

Former druggie and alcoholic, Munch Mancini, is working as an auto mechanic and attending meetings at Alcoholics Anonymous when former lover "Sleaze" John pays a visit to ask a favor. She tries to stay out of trouble, but this "friend" from the past draws her into temptation and makes her a person of interest in several murders.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Barbara Seranella's Munch Mancini--a 1970s ex-druggie and jailbird wrestling with her self-esteem and her future--was a blast of original air in the first book about her, No Human Involved. The only problem was that there seemed to be no way she could be as interesting or edgy ever again. Happily, it turns out that Seranella, a longtime car mechanic to the rich and famous of Los Angeles, is even better at tinkering with a word processor. No Offense Intended shows us a growing and changing Munch, while avoiding most of the traps that second books of a series can fall into.

It must have been tempting, for example, to have Munch team up again with Lt. Mace St. John, the thorny but eventually very sympathetic cop who helped her in the first book. But that would have diminished both her fragility and inventiveness, giving her someone too solid to lean on. Instead, we find Munch on her own when an ex-lover rolls into Happy Jack's Auto Repair in the San Fernando Valley to ask her to look after his baby daughter. And when that lover is found dead on the San Diego Freeway, mixed up in a biker gang's dangerous arms dealings, Munch does much of the dirty work on her own before linking up with a LAPD homicide detective.

Equally inventive is the natural way Seranella uses Munch's car repair skills to give the character depth and move the story along without making too much of it. Locked up in jail and needing to smoke and make a phone call, Munch persuades a reluctant guard to loosen up by telling her how to fix the ignition on her '67 Camaro Super Sport. The explanation is so wonderfully authoritative that the page (158) should be copied by anyone who owns that car. As for the rest of this moving and exciting book, you'll be passing it around a lot, as well. --Dick Adler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

It's 1977 and Munch (nee Miranda) Mancini, first seen in No Human Involved (1997), has indulged in her share of street scams and drugs, which is why she's on probation. The street-smart Munch is a babe in the woods, though, when it comes to leading a regular life?working as a car mechanic, visiting her parole officer and attending a drug rehab program. When Sleaze John, Munch's old friend from her using days, shows up at the garage, it's not because he wants her to tune up the truck he's just stolen. Sleaze asks Munch to pick up his baby girl and drop her off at his sister's in Venice Beach. Munch is wary of being drawn back into her old life, but that afternoon, on her way to visit her parole officer, she passes a fatal traffic accident in which Sleaze is the victim. Should she get involved or keep on driving? What about the baby, now orphaned and waiting for someone to pick her up? Munch does the right thing, but her good deed drags her into a mess involving drug running, the burglary of an armory and several murders. Thrown in the clapper for violating parole, Munch is released by a detective named Jig Blackstone, who joins forces with her to take down the bad guys?and save the baby. As in her first appearance, Munch, bruised but not beaten by life, again gets under the reader's skin. Her adventures, while hectic, remain generally plausible, with Seranella's gift for snappy dialogue and descriptions of domestic chaos bridging any gaps in believability. This is a mystery series with legs.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 198 pages
• Publisher: Dark City Books (June 15, 2006)
• ISBN-10: 0976876825
• ISBN-13: 978-0976876823
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #774,400 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Even better than No Human Involved, August 27, 2000

By 

D. P. Birkett (Suffern, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: No Offense Intended (Munch Mancini Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

It doesn't have quite the shock impact of No Human Involved because Munch is a reformed character from the beginning. On the other hand the climactic action scene and dialogue are more plausible. Some wonderful writing about auto mechanics and descriptions like an abandoned building where " a morning glory vine flush with large purple blooms had taken over the Center's back fence and formed a web between two palm trees" Her relationships with children and religion add an extra dimension.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling as ever, June 17, 2000

By 

Charlotte Vale-Allen (CT USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: No Offense Intended (Munch Mancini Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

I fell in love with Munch Mancini in No Human Involved, and I love her still. Aside from the fact that Seranella writes with harrowing accuracy about drug addiction, her tinkerings with various engines--both human and mechanical--are never less than bang-on. This is a truly fine series.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Is Munch getting warm and fuzzy edges? Please not, January 1, 2001

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: No Offense Intended (Munch Mancini Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

In NO OFFENSE INTENDED, author Barbara Seranella continues the perils of her misfit heroine, "Munch" Mancini, a recovering drug addict and ex-hooker in 1977 Los Angeles. Munch still works as an ace mechanic at Happy Jack's Auto Repair, a job she initially landed in Seranella's first novel, NO HUMAN INVOLVED, also reviewed by me ( 5 stars) on this website.

Munch just can't seem to stay out of hot water. Or, rather, it seems to find her. One day, she is visited at work by a friend from her low-life days, one Sleaze John. That same afternoon, he's shot dead, apparently by a sniper, while driving along the freeway. This murder, and two others, propels Munch into new difficulties with the local law, represented by LAPD Homicide Detective Jigsaw Blackstone, and the FBI. It also gets Munch her first-ever plane ride into the "friendly skies". (From the fact alone that she seems to enjoy the experience, the reader knows it isn't 2001!)

In NO HUMAN INVOLVED, the LAPD's lead player, Detective Mace St. John, lived in a renovated 1927 Pullman car. In this thriller, Blackstone inhabits a renovated brewery. (I'm impressed, but don't any of LA's Finest reside in normal houses like us regular citizens?) This notable eccentricity aside, NO OFFENSE INTENDED doesn't measure up, in my opinion, to Seranella's first offering. Even though she remains a sympathetic character, Munch has lost some of the antisocial edginess that made her so endearing the first time around. Moreover, the latest storyline hasn't the same sort of humorous elements or ending plot twist that so impressed me in the previous. However, I do plan on reading Seranella's third novel in the Mancini series, UNWANTED COMPANY, and hope for the author's return to unqualified excellence, and Mancini's re-acquisition of a bad attitude.