Unwanted Company
   Barbara Seranella
  2000 HarperPaperbacks
   ISBN: 0060192135


Clean & sober now for 6 years, Munch Mancini has her own limo service with one silver Cadillac & the post-graduation slump of summer ahead. She hires out for a week to a cash-toting customer with a hidden agenda. After the women who escorted her customer & his friend end up dead, Munch gets drawn back into the sleuthing business. When longtime friend Ellen, recently released from jail, turns up complete with her gallery of wigs & dare-devil sense of fun, Munch offers her a temporary slot as a driver. While Munch is busy taking care of her daughter Asia, Ellen accepts a job driving a customer to Mexico where limo, customer & Ellen disappear off the screen.

In Unwanted Company Barbara Seranella has moved into another decade just before the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, when a gruesome serial killer, with a twisted history arrives in the City of Angels under diplomatic immunity while being wooed by the CIA. Glad to be free of the stifling death-throes of Communism & filled with a patronizing adoration for the naivete of Americans, this diplomat gives in to his appetites while playing coy to the agent set upon turning him.

Meanwhile Munch's life, which has been wonderfully ordinary for a few years of recovery, motherhood & upright citizenry is about to be pulled off the wagon when her limo & its most recent passengers are implicated in a couple of bizarre, ritualistic murders.
 
As a form of insurance against misbehavior by minors Munch had installed a concealed recording system in her limo & had caught some troubling conversations between the vanished customers. Meanwhile, Detective Mace St. John comes back into her life, looking for clues & Munch finally has to trust in a cop again when they set out for Mexico where more gory bodies have turned up along with her damaged limo.

Of Ellen there has been no sign, so when St. John warns her that one of the bodies in the morgue is female with a wig, Munch insists she go along to identify her, hoping against hope.

When the body turns out not to be her friend & Munch cannot identify any of the other bodies, St. John & she bribe the police to release her Cadillac & they make a dash back to the US before Customs on both sides of the border stop them.

Back in LA there's a recorded message from Ellen & St. John realizes that Munch has now become a target. Something either Ellen or Munch have seen or heard is going to get them killed.

Ellen spells trouble - I knew it the moment she opened her mouth! I watched Munch squirm between being glad to see her again & wary because along with Ellen's immaculate articulation & chameleon personality, things have a tendency to go hilariously if dangerously wrong. Ellen is only just on the wagon, actually she's still got a foot dragging & is brought down quickly by the flash of cash & the high living of her passengers. Still, her survival instincts have not been blunted & she manages to make her way back to Munch's home, unwittingly trailing a stalker behind her.

Unwanted Company is another satisfying read from Barbara Seranella with all the ingredients I so like in her Munch Mancini books; quirky, dangerous characters, lots of unexpected action & some good moments of memory & redemption.

Well worth the read!
 
Also by Barbara Seranella:
No Human Involved & reviewed No Offense Taken
(07/09/00)

Rebecca