I used to work with a guy on the loading dock at Chrysler Mack Stamping. The rest of the plant pounded out car parts from thick rolls of sheet metal, and us two, and a few others, would load rail cars and 18-wheelers with racks of mostly fenders and stub frames, sent off to other factories to be turned into Dodge pickups or Chrysler New Yorkers. Every time I'd tell a stupid joke or some other lie, Jay would look at me and say with utter sincerity, "Danny, you crazy."
So it's with a certain amount of pride that I turn to Cass Adams, the main character in "Call Me Daddy," and say, "Cass, you crazy."
I'm acquainted with Kelly Stone Gamble through our MFA institution, and she provided me with a copy of her book to read and review. Friends don't let friends buy their books. But listen, if I'd read her first installment in the series, "Call Me Crazy," I would happily have paid to read this rollicking second story.
Kelly's prose is easy and conversational, and Cass's first-person perspective brings all of her neurotic quirks and full-bore personality right into your face literally in the first paragraph. Cass has just mowed down a man outside of a strip club with her truck.
"He just happened to be standing in the middle of the wrong road when my radio went on the fritz and I had to beat on the dashboard to get it working. That explains why I didn't see him before my hood ornament did."
Her characters are often stereotypes in the best way—stereotypes exist because the real people they reflect also exist, real and imagined. Kelly's Sheriff Rudy Drown has a certain Sheriff Buford T. Justice swagga, down to his penchant for the word "sumbitch!" (for the uninitiated, BTJ was the loon sheriff who chased Burt Reynolds all through "Smokey and the Bandit in 1977). But Sheriff Drown has just enough restraint to be a legitimate law enforcement officer determined to make Cass pay for her second homicide.
The first was her husband, Roland. You'll have to go read the first book, "Call Me Crazy," for that story.
Her dialog is funny and pointed, real-world sarcastic and sharp-edged, in some ways like those boys in James Dickey's "Deliverance," the book or the film.
"Rudy ... is now filling up the [truck] window.
'What happened out there, girlie? I find it hard to believe you didn't see him standing in the middle of the road.' He's snarling and sucking his teeth.
'Well, I find it hard to believe the citizens of this county keep electing you to office,' Clay shoots back." Priceless.
I don't want to give away a bunch of spoilers. but suffice to say there is more to this story—and to Cass—than meets the eyeball. The small-town, semi-rural scenes reminded me of some of Flannery O'Conner's seminal work; though these two writers are not the same and have utterly different styles, I couldn't shake the feeling that one or more of Kelly's characters would have been at home in an O'Conner story.
Strongly, unequivocally recommended.