No Human Involved

From Kirkus Reviews As far as the Venice PD is concerned, the murder of lowlife dealer ``Flower George'' Mancini is a clear case of AVA, NHI- -``asshole versus asshole, no human involved.'' So it's no big deal when Mancini's daughter Munch, the chief suspect in his killing, gives Sgt. Mace St. John the slip and disappears into the San Fernando Valley. But when the gun that shot Mancini is linked to a grisly series of dismemberments, Mace wishes he'd paid closer attention to Munch's moves while he had the chance. Even though he squeezes some personal details of her horrible life (her father got her hooked and repeatedly sold her for drugs) out of her attractive probation officer, he has no way of tracing her to Happy Jack's Auto Repair, where she's working as a lippy mechanic and assiduously building the new paper trail that'll bury her old identity for good. While Mace is wrestling with his own father's problems--a series of strokes have left Digger St. John sadly addled--another break in the case links the killings to a deadly, penicillin-resistant strain of gonorrhea, and puts Mace on Munch's trail once again. But does he really want to catch this gamine druggie when she's finding Jesus, going to NA meetings, and working wonders on the cars at Happy Jack's? Munch's scenes pulse with such startling immediacy--she's definitely worth another round, even if kindly, sensitive Mace never returns--that first-timer Seranella makes you forget how familiar her story is. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. There's a scene in NO HUMAN INVOLVED, Barbara Seranella's richly mordant first mystery, where a tough former druggie and prostitute named Munch Mancini is about to start a valve job on a Dodge. 'Finally, she was satisfied that all the bolts that held the cylinder heads to the block were out and all the other accessories safely out of the way ..... This was where, she always thought, being strong could work against you. Better to be smart and have to think the job through, rather than to be a bull who tore things apart ...' Seranella learned about valve jobs by working for 20 years at a Texaco station in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood, where many of her regular customers were familiar faces from movies and television. Where she learned to write is another story: there are no schools that teach you how to create perfect characters like Munch or Mace St. John, the LAPD homicide detective who thinks Munch shot her abusive father. Even non mystery fans will be hooked by Seranella's evocative writing: scenes such as the one between St. John and his father, an Alzheimer's sufferer, confirm that this author is one to watch out for. -- Dick Adler