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.
