Unfinished Business [Hardcover]

Barbara Seranella (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 30, 2004

Munch Mancini finally has her life together and she's now a respectable mum with a regular job. By day, Munch is one of the Brentwood Texaco's best mechanics. By night, she drives a limo. As she waits outside a charity gala two guests leave arguing and Munch senses a threat. Soon one of her customers will be murdered, another will be raped and tortured, and Munch will find herself trapped in the mayhem. Which brings her to Mace St. John, the cop who arrested her back in her biker days. Now they are friends, but Munch sometimes yearns for more. All is tested when they're thrown together in the hunt for a killer. A riveting novel!

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Miranda "Munch" Mancini is quite a woman. She's a recovering drug and alcohol abuser; she's a southern California auto mechanic; she's the sole proprietor of a fledgling limo service; she's a loving mother to her 7-year-old adopted daughter, Asia. Set in the early 1980s, Barbara Seranella's fourth Mancini novel, Unfinished Business, has Munch and her friend, detective Mace St. John, in hot pursuit of a serial rapist-murderer who's killed one of her clients, the socialite Diane Bergman, and raped another, the actress Robin Davies. Worse--for all concerned, including the rapist--the rapist has come close enough to Munch's daughter to pin a note to her coat, and now Munch is getting threatening calls:

The phone rang again. Asia reached for it.

"No," Munch said, with more force than she had intended. Asia jumped back. Munch picked up the receiver, tried to give Asia a comforting smile, and said "Hello?"

"You have a nice house," the strangely distorted voice said. It vibrated, sounding like the voice of that robot in that old television show Lost in Space. The cadence was slow, as if the speaker needed an extra moment to prepare each word. "But you really shouldn't take the same route home every day."

Gritty, creepy in the extreme, and at times positively harrowing, Unfinished Business is a most welcome entry into the Mancini line (No Human Involved, No Offense Intended, Unwanted Company). Seranella's characters are wholly yet finely drawn, their dialogue is true, and the mounting urgency she packs into this novel's pace, particularly down the home stretch, is palpable. --Michael Hudson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Seranella's lady mechanic is back fixing cars and catching criminals in this fourth Munch Mancini crime novel (Unwanted Company, etc.), featuring the spunky auto-repair gal and her sidekick, Det. Mace St. John. In mid-'80s L.A., Munch, mechanic to the rich and famous, is distraught when a customer, philanthropic socialite Diane Bergman, is found dead on the side of the freeway, dressed in a negligee with electrocution marks on her body. The details of Diane's murder resemble a rape case Mace has been investigating for a few months; when he discovers that a third case suggests the same modus operandi and that the victim, Robin Davies, is also a customer at Munch's garage, the mechanic and the cop join forces once again. Along with her friend D.W. from the Meals-on-Wheels program, Munch tries to comfort Robin, who has not left her home since being raped. As soon as Robin begins to accept support, Munch starts getting threatening phone calls from the rapist, who knows too much about her life and the routine she follows with her seven-year-old adopted daughter, Asia. Robin disappears, Mace has a heart attack and suddenly Munch is left alone to catch the bad guy. More threats to Munch and her daughter follow, to everyone's dismay, yet the reader feels little trepidation. A cast of one-dimensional secondary characters take their places as stock suspects until the perpetrator's identity is revealed with little clue as to a motive. All flaws considered, Munch is a likable protagonist, and Seranella's 20 years as a mechanic puts an unusual spin on this series. Yet among so many other crime novels boasting strong heroines, this one doesn't stand out.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Robert Hale Ltd (July 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0709076568
• ISBN-13: 978-0709076568
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,494,565 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great work in a dynamite seriwes, April 21, 2001

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Unfinished Business: A Munch Mancini Crime Novel (Munch Mancini Novels) (Hardcover)

Miranda "Munch" Mancini had a difficult adolescence and moved out at the earliest available moment. Munch used alcohol, drugs, and sex to forget some of her pain. However, an inner strength allowed Munch to clean up her act, but she has never forgotten her roots, helping others in similar crisis.

Munch has an adopted seven-year-old child whom she adores. She works as a mechanic and moonlights as a limousine driver. On her current driving job, Munch sees the chairwoman arguing with an unknown male. Several days later, the woman is found murdered. The police believe a serial rapist killed the victim. By coincidence, Munch learns of another victim, who survived the rape. Munch tries to help her friend cope even as the rapist threatens to kill Asia. An irate Munch vows to bring this maniac down even if it knowingly places her in danger.

Of the four Mancini novels, UNFINSHED BUSINESS is the most memorable as the heroine becomes a complete character with flaws as opposed to a bad girl makes good stereotype. The story line contains a lot of surprises that keeps the reader's attention. Munch's best trait is her maturity that allows her to know she does not have all the answers but that is okay because nobody does. Barbara Seranella is a gifted writer who makes her characters seems real and fun to observe in action.

Harriet Klausner

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Munch is back and better than ever, June 24, 2001

By 

Sandie Herron (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unfinished Business: A Munch Mancini Crime Novel (Munch Mancini Novels) (Hardcover)

Munch Mancini is back and stronger than ever. She has a quiet, efficient, hard-earned calm about her these days. This fourth adventure left me breathless. Not from a quick, tremendous climax but from a buildup of action from the first pages of the book. Slowly the tension of figuring out a case that tied in to multiple cases and who did it and why fueled the pages of this expertly written crime novel with excitement and anticipation.

Munch still has her limousine service and is working as the "lady mechanic" at the Brentwood gas station. She has the opportunity to meet and help out Diane Bergman, newly widowed head of the Bergman Cancer Center. She's volunteered to drive home anyone needing it from the charity fundraiser. When Diane Bergman is murdered and left dead on the side of the freeway a few days later, Detective Mace St. John is assigned to the case. It is Munch who identifies the rich socialite from the photo of the scene where the victim was found with scorch marks on her body and eyes taped shut with duct tape.

Shortly afterward, taking an opportunity to help her fellow woman, Munch helps deliver Meals-on-Wheels to a rape victim still suffering from the trauma's effects a month later. Talking with Robin and with St. John and meeting a rape counselor teaches Munch a lot about what rape really is and what the effects are. Munch still struggles with issues from her childhood, some of which are brought up now. She has enough distance from those earlier years to see through clearer eyes now what really happened then.

Determined to help Robin, Munch pursues the investigation with Detective St. John and discovers similarities between Robin's attack and Diane Bergman's death. As they begin to piece together the puzzle, a man with a disguised voice begins calling Munch - the same man who is terrorizing Robin with calls and threats to return. He gets word to Munch via her adopted daughter that he knows everything about Munch and that she cannot hide from him. When St. John goes out on sick leave, Munch is left on her own to figure out who this man is, where he is hiding, and how he can know so much about her.

This novel was particularly evenly paced, deftly increasing in intensity. Ultimately Munch discovers the motive behind the death of her friend through some gutsy moves of her own. She has really made great strides from her days as addict and more and is coming into herself beautifully. She has not only survived her own traumas of growing up with Flower George as a father, but she is surpassing his influence on her life.

Miranda "Munch" Mancini is one lady mechanic I'd like to know better.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Munchkin just gets better and better, June 3, 2001

By 

Charlotte Vale-Allen (CT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Unfinished Business: A Munch Mancini Crime Novel (Munch Mancini Novels) (Hardcover)

From the outset (No Human Involved) Barbara Seranella has delivered consistently splendid books, populated by completely believable, affectingly human characters. Munch Mancini is a wonderfully unique creation, a haunted yet determined young woman who refuses, ever, to play victim to the ghosts of her past. What is particularly gratifying in this series is that we get to see Munch grow very believably through time. With her street-smart philosphy and innate survival skills, her heart and her humor, she is unlike any other heroine in any other series. Unfinished Business is heartfelt, good-humored, and intelligent. Writing with insight and authority, with seamless research, and such genuine caring for her characters that the reader, too, must care for them, Seranella deserves a place on the national best-seller lists.

My one small quibble is the anachronistic reference to carpal tunnel syndrome which, in the early 80s, was almost unheard-of--certainly it wasn't common at a time when computers were not occupying desk space in almost every home. That said, I can only applaud the author and wait eagerly for the next book.