No Offense Intended - Hardcover

Seranella, Barbara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060192127 ISBN 13: 9780060192129

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1998

Synopsis

Onetime mechanic Miranda Mancini reluctantly calls on some dangerous people from her past to help solve a murder

About this title

About the Author

Barbara Seranella lives in California with her husband and her dogs. She quit her job as an auto mechanic to write full-time. Her first book, No Human Involved was a Los Angeles Times bestseller.

Reviews

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.

It sounds simple enough: Just pick up Sleaze John Garillo's baby Asia from the neighbor who's been watching her while Sleaze has been, uh, busy, and deliver her together with her baby gear to Sleaze's sister Lisa Slokum. But nothing is simple when you're a recovering alcohol-and-drug abuser on probation, like Venice car mechanic Munch Mancini, and nothing is simple when it involves Sleaze, who can't even make it through the day he turns up at Happy Jack's Auto Repair without getting himself shot on the freeway. Munch, on her way to check in with her probation officer in Santa Monica, just happens to drive past Sleaze's wrecked truck and pulls over, marking the first of two times she'll flee a crime scene. (She also ducks out of an autopsy she's sneaked into.) Caught between a drug-running sharpshooter who's firing ammunition stolen from a National Guard Armory and the FBI control freaks investigating the robbery, Munch ends up pairing off in a wary cat-and-mouse game not with saintly Lt. Mace St. John (No Human Involved, 1997), but with Homicide detective Jigsaw Blackstone, who's already in bed with the FBI, courtesy of the sexiest chess game since The Thomas Crown Affair. Things would look bleak for starchy Munchif, that is, there were any serious doubt about who's behind the crime spree. Munch is still a great heroine, but this follow-up lacks the energy and originality that gave her debut such edgy promise. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060192127
• ISBN 13: 9780060192129
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 266