With shades of Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde, in his latest crime novel, Dietrich Kalteis takes us on an archetypal magic flight through 1973 British Columbia. As Blake Snyder would say, it’s the Golden Fleece. Revamped and dirtied down, this “road movie” illuminates, not only the crime, but the character of the thieving protagonists.
Kalteis writes brash, raw, dirty, and gritty like no one else. So, it’s tough to have sympathy for the beautiful Bobbi Ricci, who hooked up with 60-year-old “Maddog” Palmieri or Lonzo, as the Italian crime boss likes to be called, because she likes the money and the “tough-guy routine”. To root for a character they need some redeeming qualities—Bobbi makes that hard and Lonzo makes it harder. Her descriptions of Lonzo leave us wondering if riding in the boss’s limo and high-end dining out in Vancouver is worth the price.
Apparently not. Five months in, Bobbi’s had enough of Lonzo with his “graying hair, combed in a swirl to hide the pink dome, bluish veins like a road map above his ankles, [and an] ass like a deflated tire.”
Not a woman to be trifled with (which might be one of her redeeming qualities) Bobbi plans her escape.
Enter Denny Barrenko. An American draft dodger who demonstrated against the Vietnam War then flew north, he landed in Vancouver and worked for a time as Lonzo’s limo driver—which is where he first saw Bobbi in the rear view mirror. Then Lonzo fired him and ripped him off. Seeking retribution, Denny breaks into Lonzo’s place in the midst of Bobbi’s escape. She catches him and forces him to help her run with two of Lonzo’s Gucci bags containing half-a-million dollars in secret cash. Bobbi’s drugged Lonzo and just to add insult to injury, they take his caddy. And so, fifty pages in, the magic flight begins.
None too smart and driven by emotion, Bobbi calls Lonzo from a pay phone in Squamish to gloat and get the last word—a mistake that gets assassin, Lee Trane on their tail.
A hair-raising escapade fueled by impulsive choices, this page-turner kept me up most of the night. I love any kind of road story, especially one that comes with down-and-dirty drama, a trail of stolen vehicles, a police chase, devious underdogs, and a map: Vancouver, Squamish, Whistler, Lillooet, Smithers, Ripley, and eventually, Killick, Alaska. It also comes with a fabulous 1970s soundtrack, all the details of the decade, and masterful descriptions, all in Kalteis’s casually clipped style.
I’ll leave you to discover for yourself what the title alludes to. Where’s The Cradle of the Deep? Do Bobbi and Denny get caught or do they escape the police, the assassin, and others they’ve met along the way? Does their relationship grow into anything more than mutual Lonzo-haters and escapees? And the half-a-million dollar question—what happened to the cash?
As reviewed in the Ottawa Review of Books, February 2021
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Dietrich Kalteis 
