No Offense Intended (Munch Mancini Novels) - Softcover

Barbara Seranella

3.9

143 ratings by Goodreads

9780061097249: No Offense Intended (Munch Mancini Novels)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061097241 ISBN 13: 9780061097249

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000

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If only expert mechanic Munch Mancini could keep her life running as smoothly as the cars she repairs. A former substance abuser, Munch is doing her best each day to keep the sins of her past behind her, but it seems that there's always some old friend or temptation blocking her path. Like her ex-lover, Sleaze Garillo, a shady hustler who comes around looking for a favor.

When Sleaze drops out of sight under troubling circumstances--possibly as the victim of a sniper attack on the freeway--Munch can't help but get involved. The cops are after her for answers. But Munch doesn't have any--yet. Unlike the police, she's the only one with the friends and connections to find the truth. Of course that means revisiting the lingering characters from her past--friend and foe--and dealing with them once and for all. She's used to battling drug smugglers, bikers, and the law, but this time, she's facing the hardest fight of her life--protecting the baby daughter Sleaze left behind.

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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

About the Author:

Barbara Seranella is a former auto mechanic who lives in California with her husband and their dogs. She is the author of No Offense Intended and the Los Angeles Times bestseller No Human Involved.She welcomes mail at barbaraseranella.com

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