Unfinished Business: A Munch Mancini Crime Novel (Munch Mancini Novels) - Hardcover

Seranella, Barbara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743212665 ISBN 13: 9780743212663

Publisher: Scribner, 2001

Synopsis

Munch Mancini finally has her life together. A former drug addict and biker who lived rough on the streets, she's now a respectable mom with a regular job. By day, Munch is one of the Brentwood Texaco's best mechanics. By night, she drives a limo. Even better, she owns the limo, and at forty-six bucks an hour, it brings in some nice change. Like tonight, when the meter metaphorically ticks as she takes in the view outside a cliffside Pacific Palisades mansion while the glamorous types inside drink champagne at a charity gala. Munch sees things while she waits. Two people come out of the house. They argue. 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. She knows something important, perhaps from that night in the Palisades, perhaps from her work at the garage. Whatever it is, it's significant enough for her to become a target. Munch has much to worry about already. There's her seven-year-old adopted daughter, Asia. Munch would sacrifice anything to keep her safe and secure. There's the current man in her life, Garret Dimond. He's perfect in many ways. She's always prayed for a lover who won't drive her crazy, but she also needs a guy who will keep her awake. 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. That's impossible. It won't happen. It mustn't. All is tested when they're thrown together in the hunt for a killer. Vulnerable, courageous, unpredictable, Munch Mancini packs a powerfully entertaining punch in this riveting novel from one of the brightest new stars of crime fiction.

About this title

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

About the Author:

Barbara Seranella was born in Santa Monica and grew up in Pacific Palisades. After running away from home at fourteen, joining a hippie commune in the Haight, and riding with outlaw motorcycle clubs, she decided to do something normal, so she became a mechanic. Her Munch Mancini novels are No Human Involved, No Offense Intended, and Unwanted Company. She and her husband, Ron, and their two dogs divide their time between Laguna Beach and LaQuinta, California. Her website is www.barbaraseranella.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0743212665
• ISBN 13: 9780743212663
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272