No Offense Intended [Hardcover]

Barbara Seranella (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, U.S.A. (1998)
• ASIN: B002K7GT2O
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

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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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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
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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.