Unpaid Dues

✍ Scribed by Seranella, Barbara

• Publisher: Robert Hale
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 135 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780709077008

✦ Synopsis

Amazon.com Review

Munch Mancini's past catches up with her in this sixth adventure featuring the reformed bad girl turned garage mechanic and single mother--a series that's gaining fans with every new outing for a good reason--Munch is an authentically original creation with grit, wit, and determination, which often serve her better than her loyalty to old friends. Now one of those friends turns up murdered, and when homicide Detective Mace St. John finds Munch's prints and photo on the corpse's records, a bloody part of her past threatens to blow Munch and her daughter's future away. If that's not enough, the teenage son of another old friend turns up on Munch's doorstep, but of course it's no coincidence. By the time Sernaella ties a boy named Bug, a drug-fueled murder spree the cops have long since closed the books on, and a dead woman in a storm drain together in a fast-placed plot, she's brought another piece of Munch's history into sharper focus, making her hard-fought struggle to turn her life around even more interesting, involving, and inspiring. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly

While Seranella has been justly praised for the grittiness of her Munch Mancini novels (No Man Standing, etc.), this, the sixth installment, could have benefited from less grit and more storytelling gruel. When homicide detective Mace St. John runs prints on a murdered woman, he finds Munch's photo in the arrest report, since 10 years earlier Munch used the dead woman's name in beating a DUI charge. But now Munch, in an attempt to clean up her act, has moved on to the quiet life, bringing up her eight-year-old daughter and keeping a lid on her past transgressions. Unfortunately, the past won't stay past. Rico Chacon, her boyfriend-detective, discovers a link between the current case and a triple homicide. Pressed to the wall, Munch deliberately baits the killer and runs the risk of winding up on his hit list. The author has the makings of a suspenseful mystery here, but she overdoes the down and dirty elements. A cast of junkies, bikers, criminals and assorted forms of lowlife overwhelm the reader, with nary a ray of hope among the unrelieved gloom. Realism may have been the intended goal, but after awhile the effect is simply depressing. Another, equally serious drawback is the unconscionable amount of padding throughout. The inevitable result is tedium rather than tension, ennui instead of edginess. Let's hope that better things lie ahead for Munch. For now, the unpaid dues are to the reader.
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