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Young "Munch" Mancini drops into a bar to pay her debt but stays to have a few, some of which are bought by a man with "a basset hound face." After the few, she leaves to go to the bathroom, and sneaks out the door. Munch is a drunk, a drug addict, a prostitute with venereal disease, and it's the 1970s in Los Angeles. Her father, "Flower George" Mancini, has been found dead, and Munch is a suspect. She evades Mace St. John, the detective who bought her drinks at the bar, and goes to a cab depot, where her friend Orson "The Wizard" Ozwald, sells her a car for $300 which gives out before she gets out of LA She hides the car in some foliage near the road, curls up into a ball on the car seat and tries to sleep. Meanwhile, Mace St. John has gone home to his restored 1927 Pullman car to go to sleep. He and his father had planned to buy and restore the car and travel in it all over the US, but "Digger" has had a series of strokes, and is living in the family home with a caretaker.. The next day. Mace goes to Ballona Creek, near where a severed arm had been found, to try and figure out where the rest of the body might be, even though the case had been kicked upstairs. Munch gets herself a job as an auto mechanic on Monday morning. She also makes an appointment to get baptized, knowing that a baptismal certificate is all the information needed to get a new driver's license and start a new identity, Munch and St John both believe that she killed her father who sold her into prostitution and made her a drug addict. She doesn't care that he's dead but she wants to stay free and the only way she will be able to do that is to stay straight. St John really doesn't care about Mancini, either one of them, but he becomes convinced that she is involved in the gruesome dismemberment of the young woman, and so tries to find her again. Meanwhile, Munch goes to N.A. and AA meetings, does her best at work, and tries to stay out of sight. It's hard to believe that this is a first novel. Seranella tells a touching story of a young woman who thinks that life can only get better, and a police detective who has his own problems. There are many well developed secondary characters, and a Los Angeles peopled by losers who all have something to hide.
Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, August 2002
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