No Human Involved by Barbara Seranella
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. As she has reinvented herself as Daisy now working at Happy Jack's Auto Repair, as a lippy mechanic and assiduously building the new paper trail that will 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 trying to make good and old wrongs?
Interesting story, set in the late 1970's in Los Angeles, we see the darker side of free love and drugs era. Munch short for Munchkin as she used to work for the Wiz as an auto mechanic. I enjoyed how the story switched from Munch to Mace until at the end the story overlapped you had a hard time seeing who was saving whom. Munch's character is not someone to feel sorry for as she is a survivor and finding her way out of a life that has no regard to human or animal life. Mace on the other hand is working as a police detective and finding his path filled with roadblocks from work to personal with his dad's declining health. I love at the end how he ends up adopting 2 dogs when he doesn't even want one. Seranella really shows a person's depth by the small details. Definitely worth reading more of her books.