Robert FateRecensioni

My recent crime spree has taken me from Laos to Sweden and landed me in Texas, the setting for Robert Fate’s novel Baby Shark. Kristin Van Dijk is only seventeen when her father is murdered before her very eyes. She is left for dead after being sexually assaulted and beaten.

Although he lost his own son to the murderous biker gang, Henry Chin, owner of the pool hall where the crime went down, comes to Kristin’s rescue, pulling her out of the burning building and saving her life. Together, Kristin and Henry are determined to go after the men responsible for the deaths of their loved ones and for hurting Kristin. The police do not seem to care and someone has to pay the price of justice.

Baby Shark is set in Texas during the early 1950’s, a time before DNA testing, cell phones and computers. Women and minorities had their place in society and rarely stepped outside of that. Kristin broke the mold when she picked up the pool cue, following in her father’s footsteps, and trained to be a killer. She had been victimized once and instead of turning inward, she decided to face her fear and act out against it.

Kristin is both intelligent and quick on her feet. She has a hard outer shell, having built up her defenses to protect herself as best as she can. She can kill without remorse. And yet, she still holds onto her humanity. One of my favorite moments in the book is when she asks about the welfare of the dogs, knowing the owner will not be able to see to them anymore.

Robert Fate brings together an unlikely cast of characters. There is Henry Chin, the cabinet maker, who takes Kristin in and helps guide her down her new life path; Sarge, a World War II veteran, who teaches both Kristin and Henry how to fight; Albert, the one legged Korean War veteran who has a weakness for booze and whose knowledge in guns comes in handy; Harlan, a con man and pool hustler who mentors Kristin in the game of pool, shaping her into Baby Shark, a force to be reckoned with at the pool table; and Otis Millett, the former police officer now private investigator, who Henry hires to find the men behind the attack at the pool hall on that fateful night. Each of these men plays an important part in Kristin’s life as she transitions over from child to woman.

The novel is even more salient, coming from Kristin’s point of view. Robert Fate’s writing style is straight forward, and the story he has created is captivating. There was a split second near the beginning of the novel when I wondered if Baby Shark was for me, but that thought died a quick death the more I read. Baby Shark is one of those stories that grips hold of the reader and plays on the emotions. It is easy to understand why Kristin and Henry seek a justice of their own variety—and I cheered for them all along the way.

Fast-paced action where the victim is also the heroine. Kristin overcomes odds that were so balanced against her as to bury most of us. She watches her father's murder, she is assaulted and left for dead, then the bikers that created the carnage attempt to burn the pool hall down to the bodies and evidence.

Henry Chin, the Chinese owner of the pool hall, who's son Will was also murdered wants revenge. Since in the 50's a non-white had no power, he begins to train Kristin to take his revenge.

I don't know how a 70 year old male writer has been able to so accurately get into the mind of a seventeen year old girl. But the character he has created so skillfully, is true to the period and to her age and sex.

From the moment you begin this book you won't want to put it down. You will be in Baby's corner all the way. The twists and turns may surprise and horrify you but you will read to the end. And, then want to know what happens next. Enjoy!.

The 2nd in the Baby Shark series. Still, great characters but this did not grab me the same as the first in the series.

The story deals with her becoming a private eye in partnership with Otis Millet,.Otis helped locate the bikers who murdered her father. This tale expands her relationship with Otis, but I felt some flavor was lost without seeing Henry Chin, Sarge, and Sun Man.

Though I was a little disappointed, it seems a necessary step to let her grow into Kristin Dijk, private eye.

It is June 1961 as this sixth book in the series opens. Kristin Van Dijk, known to one and all as “Baby Shark,” has always pushed things to the edge. While never fully expressed, no matter the situation, she carries herself with an attitude that she does not care whether she lives or dies. Working with Fort Worth Private Investigator Otis Millett has not polished her rough edges though he and others have tried. Working for him has increased her skill set while also making violent situations ultimately involving the police a little smoother than they would have been otherwise. But, that may be about to change as this latest incident involving Baby Shark might be too much for all involved to ignore. Going solo has consequences.

While the gates of hell just received two more very worthy inductees, in the land of the living Baby Shark has a problem. Five years of working with Otis is not going to make this go away. Even with her background there are limits and she has really done it this time. Otis isn’t the only one who thinks she needs a vacation to clear her head and get her mind straight. He is the only one around who could enforce her taking a break and he definitely wants her out of town for a bit.

Baby Shark hits the road intending to see some old friends and get back to what she used to do to make money--play pool. Her moniker is legendary and those who don’t know of her in smoky pool rooms and dives across the state of Texas are about to get a crash course in reality. The only problem with her plan is that she might find more trouble out on the road than if she had stayed home and worked cases.

The series that started with the powerful debut novel Baby Shark (reviewed here) just keeps getting better and better. Plenty of action, complicated characters, and powerful imagery fuel this high octane series in reads that don’t stop until the final words. Baby Shark’s Grass Widow Legacy is another very good read in an excellent series featuring a character forged in fire and blood determined to dispense justice as she sees fit. In her world some folks need help and a lot of folks need killing and she intends to do both while running the table.

Baby Shark’s Grass Widow Legacy
Robert Fate
http://www.robertfate.com
Self-Published
October 2013
ASIN: B00GCYQHMS
266 Pages
$3.99

Material was purchased last month to read/review thanks to a small credit in my Amazon Associates account.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2014

The year is now 1958, the place is still Texas. Otis Millett and his PI partner, Kristin van Dijk (Baby Shark) are enjoying a rest at the home of their friend Henry Chin when a phone call takes them back to Fort Worth. Otis has to identify the body of his wife, who has been found shot to death. Dixie and Otis had not been together for 10 years or so, but never divorced. Dixie had been a well-known stripper, but now appears to have been working in a bank -- a bank recently robbed with a moonlighting cop killed in the robbery. It appears Dixie was killed for double-crossing the other bank robbers. Otis wants to find Dixie's killer, and the police want to find the copkiller and the location of the loot from several bank robberies. Kristin agrees to impersonate Dixie's next of kin to draw the killer out. There is danger around every corner, but Kristin can hold her own in a bar fight, a shootout, or a car chase.
As usual, the book is not for readers who prefer their violence offstage. I'm usually one of those people, but there's something about Baby Shark -- her voice, her insights into herself, her willingness to give the bad guys a chance to back down before she shoots to kill -- that keeps me coming back even as the body count increases. BABY SHARK'S JUGGLERS AT THE BORDER also gives us more insight into Otis Millett, one of my favorite characters in mystery fiction; and the villain of the piece is one of the more intriguing I've come across. So, go down to the bookstore and pre-order your copy now.

(I reviewed this as an ARC)
Stories of private eyes, especially female ones, occasionally give us a bit of backstory explaining how the protagonist got where she is. (For example, Charlaine Harris’s Lily Bard series does this in flashbacks and allusions to her rape and assault.) Mr. Fate’s protagonist, Kristin Van Dijk aka “Baby Shark,” has something in common with Lily, as we learn in the first chapter. She has been brutally gang-raped by a motorcycle gang
in an attack that also killed her father (her mother has died before the book opens). However, she also suffers from living in Texas in the early 1950’s, meaning that she must contend with all the prejudices of the
time and place about rape victims and women in general. The other survivor of the attack, who becomes a good friend to her, is a Chinese-American and has a whole other set of prejudices to deal with.
In addition, the police don’t seem very interested at all in tracking down the killers. What’s a girl to do? This book, the first of a series of which at least two more are to come, is apparently setting the stage
by giving us the whole story of how Kristin Van Dijk became Baby Shark.

If you do not like scenes of extreme violence, you should not read this book. It could easily be made into a movie by Quentin Tarantino or Sam Peckinpah (in which case I wouldn’t go – I can read it, I just can’t watch it).

Kristin or Baby Shark (her dad was a pool player and she becomes an even better one) is an exceptionally strong character, yet I found her believable (and yes, Robert Fate really is a man, and writes from a female point of view very well). Although she performs many acts that I would consider highly reprehensible in real life, I found her a sympathetic character. The book is full of action, but there is more to it than just a shoot-‘em-up. Baby Shark creates a new family for herself
with the few people she’s able to trust, and they are all intriguing characters. She also thinks about her own motivations and feelings in a very intelligent way.

I don’t normally like “noir” all that much, and in some ways this is a noir story. I also am heartily sick of coming-of-age stories, and in its way, this is one. Yet I could hardly put it down and finished it in one day. I’m eager to read the next two books in the series. If you can stand the heat, take a chance on Baby Shark when it comes out.

The second in the "Baby Shark" series, Baby Shark's Beaumont Blues leaves the personal vendetta behind, and instead focuses on more traditional territory: PI work, and all the grit and violence Fate can stuff in there. Less emotionally taxing - and more predictable - Beaumont Blues follows the protagonist through her professional development, and allows Kristin and Otis to shine as the true characters they are. There's nothing earth-shattering here, but Beaumont Blues is a solid read and a great sequel.½

Baby Shark opens with gut-wrenching violence against the unlucky patrons at a pool house. The unapologetic violence of the scene captivates, even as the reader wants to look away. Among the victims are 17-year-old Kristin, who is brutally raped and beaten, and her father, who is murdered.

Kristin doesn't remember getting out of the pool hall when she wakes in the hospital, but she learns that the owner - the only other survivor of the attack by a gang of bikers - dragged her from the building despite his own gunshot wounds, and manages to drive her to the relative safety of the hospital. She also learns that the police have no intention of investigating the murders and assault. Kristin and Henry find a new family in each other, drawn together by a need for both safety and revenge. Together they live, train, and plan.

Baby Shark is a tale of survival and what it takes for two damaged individuals not only to recover, but to find justice. Kristin (aka Baby Shark) seeks not only to avenge her father's death, but also to reclaim her dignity and establish herself as a strong, independent figure, regardless of the abuse she suffered and regardless of her gender in a very gender-biased setting. One reviewer remarks on a lack of morality in Kristin's actions, but my own reading suggests something very different: it is not necessarily a quest for Hammurabian revenge, but justice. If the police had pursued and prosecuted the bikers responsible for these violent crimes I would suggest that Kristin and Henry would not have have sought out their own form of justice; given the circumstances of their case, they sought punishment that was otherwise denied.

As I first read of the attack on the pool hall I did not expect to like this book, but the narrative quickly sped away, and before I knew it I was at the novel's end.½

Kristian is a girl who is strong, intellegant and fearless. She tracks down ruthless bad guys and puts them in the ground.
I like Robert Fate's stories. The characters are well developed and the plot is addictive. The suspense is perfect.
This is a series worth following.

Opening Sentence: "...The rumble of the machines stopped everything cold..."

Kristin Van Dijk, 17,travels around with her pool hustler father. On the night that the book opens she is forced by four bikers to watch the murder of her father before she herself is raped, badly beaten and left for dead. The owner of the Pool Hall were the assault took place is Henry Chin, a Chinese immigrant whose grown son was one of those murdered. He drags her out of the burning building and saves her. He hides her and helps her recover. Henry finds out that the local police are not going to investigate the pool hall crime, so he hires a sleezy ex-cop private investigator to search for the gang of killers. Henry hires a martial arts expert and a weapons expert to train Kristin in how to protect herself. A friend of her father's brings up her pool talents to that of expert. She is now one tough cookie as she starts to hustles pool in west Texas and earn the nickname Baby Shark. Now comes the revenge part.

I started out really getting into the story, was a fast paced start with a horrific opening followed by Baby rebuilding her life and becoming strong in every sense of the word. I really admired her fortitude. Then came the first killing - or should I say massacre!!! In the end it was just too much gratuitous bloodshed, revenge and eye for an eyemanship. Very quickly I was turned off by the whole concept of revenge that the plot is based on. The whole ethical thing worried me - if someone hurts you - then they can be justified in hurting them back? This is not what I want my grandson to learn. Sometimes bad thing happen to really good people - stay good and move on - don't bring yourself down to their level.

I won't be reading the second one in the series - which I have - I will pass them on to a friend who likes the more hard core stuff. I am much more happier at the cozier and of the mystery spectrum where my ethics are less likely to be challenged.

I was engrossed in this book from page one. Other reviewers have given you the story and the plot. All I can add is - read this book!

Baby Shark becomes a full blown person in this second book of Fate's series. She has moved on from the horror of our first introduction to her and joined forces with Otis as a PI to "protect" a young heiress from someone- perhaps even herself. Mr. Fate does himself proud with the plot, but even prouder with his sparse writing style- suitable to both the the landscape(Texas)of the book and the characters.A very good read indeed. I am now a confirmed fan of Mr. Fate.
The third in the series, High Plains Redemption, is on my nightstand as I type this.

Baby Shark's High Plains Redemption takes place in May, 1957, about eight months after the events in Baby Shark's Beaumont Blues.

Kristin Van Dijk (aka Baby Shark) and her partner, Otis Millett, are hired by Texas businessman Travis Horner to act as bagmen, exchanging a bag of money for his girlfriend Savannah who hasn't exactly been kidnapped but is held against her will in Oklahoma.

What should have been a straightforward exchange takes an unexpected turn when Kristin arrives late at the exchange point to find Otis being beaten by three men. Kristin rescues Otis in her usual direct fashion only to have someone else appear and take Savannah away from them.

On the way back to Texas, Kirsten sees the car Savannah and the stranger took off in, driven off the road and two other men trying to force Savannah into their car. The stranger has been shot to death. Violence ensues and Savannah is rescued again. Otis and Kristin learn that the man who took Savannah the first time is actually a relative, Lester.

Otis and Kristin still have no idea what is going on but feel that Horner must have been behind it. Instead of returning Savannah to Horner, they take her to her family headed by Oklahoma bootlegger Bull Smike. Alliances are formed and Otis and Kristen work at figuring out what is really at stake.

The story is told in first person by Kristin. She's young, in her twenties, living in Texas in the 1950s where she runs counter to the usual roles expected for women. A female private detective is not what people expect when they come to the Millet Agency. Kristin is from the same mold as Mike Hammer - she has a cold calculating courage, the ability to act quickly and violently and frequently fatally, and sees no problem delivering extra-legal justice. She isn't someone you want to cross. She is also extremely loyal to the few people she lets into her life.

The Baby Shark books fall into the hard-boiled genre of detective fiction. As such, you can expect tough characters, action, and violence. Within the framework of the hard-boiled genre, Fate has well developed, intriguing characters, good plots that pull the reader along, and excellent action. They are a great way to spend a couple of hours, lost in a story.

Fate is often asked why he set these book in the 1950s. He explains

My novel begins in the 1950s because I wanted my young female protagonist challenged by a world formed by late nineteenth and early twentieth century attitudes toward women that Rosie the Riveter had just knocked silly. Women of the Eisenhower era were much more restless than Ozzie & Harriet would have had people believe, and I wanted to tap into that with a strong, young female protagonist who could represent that unconventional spirit.

He succeeds in his portrayal of Kristin and Baby Shark, Baby Shark's Beaumont Blues, and Baby Shark's High Plains Redemption all get a hard-boiled thumbs up from me.½

The second book in a series is probably hard on an author. The first book establishes the characters and readers decide if they care enough to stick with the author. With subsequent books, the author has to develop the characters and find new plots without losing what attracted readers in the first place. I've stopped reading books that had interesting plots because I didn't care about the characters so it isn't a matter of character driven vs plot driven story, it take both. for me.

I loved Baby Shark. Baby Shark's Beaumont Blues sucked me in right away and the only reason I didn't finish it in one day is because I had to sleep.

Beaumont Blues takes place about two years after the events in Baby Shark. Kristin Van Dijk has become a licensed private investigator and Otis Millett's partner in the Millet Agency. Together they are a destructive and often lethal team. Though Kristin is not yet twenty-one, Otis doesn't treat her as anything less than a partner he trusts to watch his back. There is no "watch out for the girl" attitude on the part of Otis. He trusts Kristin to shoot when shooting is necessary.

This time they are trying to protect a Texas oil heiress and make sure she is available when her father's will is read. She has to be present or the bulk of the estate goes to a televangelist. What seems like a straight forward assignment gets complicated very quickly. Kristin and Otis are not sure who is doing what to whom all the way to the end of the book. I found the ending very satisfying. The very bad people are part of a near-by crime lord's crew and if you have read Baby Shark you can predict their fate.

Baby Shark gets a love interest in this story. Has she healed enough to be able to trust? Fate does a nice job showing that healing can take a long time.

If you like a strong female character - ready with a gun or knife - and plenty of hard-boiled action then you'll enjoy this book. If you are likely to be troubled by characters who don't see anything wrong with dispatching someone who needs to be dispatched without benefit of a trial then you might want to look for a cozy to read.

My only criticism is that Fate doesn't tell how the aftermath of the messy conclusion to Baby Shark was handled. Otis, Kristin, and Henry had a powerful lot of tracks to cover to keep from going to jail.

Baby Shark is a revenge and recovery story set in Texas in the 1950s and a terrific story in the hard-boiled school. I first read about it on The Gumshoe Review. When it didn't show up in local book stores I ordered it. I also ordered the sequel, Baby Shark's Beaumont Blues and glad I did since it saved me time getting it.

At seventeen, Kristin Van Dijk sees her father murdered in a Texas bar by a motor cycle gang and is then brutally beaten and raped. The owner of the bar, a Chinese-American named Henry Chin is shot and left for dead. He pulls Kristin from a fire set to cover-up the crime. Henry's son was also killed by the bikers. When Henry finds that someone with influence has managed to get the investigation closed, he and Kristen begin planning their private war against the bikers. Along the way they find help from: an ex-cop private eye named Otis who keeps his .45 handy and isn't adverse to taking preemptive action; a psychotic Korean War veteran and small arms expert; and a former military close-quarters combat instructor. You also get really nasty bad guys, a corrupt cop, and a waitress with a heart of gold.

The story and characters are well developed and the pacing pulls you along. I appreciated the care Fate took to set up the action. The narration is written in the first person from Kristin's point of view and has terrific hard-boiled dialog like

Bear took that stunned look of recognition directly to hell – along with two slugs in his heart.

If you like hard-boiled stories, you can't help but go "Yea!" when you read a line like that. I recommend this book to anyone who doesn't mind a lethal teenager with a grudge and much (justifable) extra-legal bloodshed.

“In a spine-jolting crunch that flattened me against the steering wheel, the Mercury slid under them and their car came down on my hood, leaving my horn blaring and my engine roaring...I spun around in the seat, used both feet to push open the door, moved fast...and started forward with my pistol in my hand.” (p. 137)

Like Fast-paced? Like strong female PI’s?

Meet.... Baby Shark!

I came in on the “third act” of Baby Shark, in High Plains Redemption, but I’ll be going back to pick up the first two books...and continue on with this hot series by Robert Fate! Baby Shark reminds me of Geena Davis in my all-time favorite action movie, The Long Kiss Goodnight! If you loved Geena in some of her outrageous acts in that movie, then you’ll certainly want to meet Baby Shark:

She can take it:

“He grabbed me by my hair and pulled me around so hard I thought my neck would snap. He jammed a hand between my thighs, picked me up by my crotch and the hair of my head, swooped me up shoulder high—and then I was falling...” (p. 130)

And she can dish it out:

“I moved instantly, swinging my hands out as I fell forward, chopping my blades into their necks as if I were striking cymbals. The first cuts were to the bone, but I slashed up and pressed in, doing even more injury as I withdrew, leaving their neck wounds open wide and their heads nearly detached from their bodies.” (p. 251)

High Plains Redemption takes Kristin Van Dijk, aka Baby Shark and partner, Otis Millett into bootlegging country and two warring mountain clans, as they are hired to find and return Savannah, daughter of one of the clan leaders—hired, but not by her own family!

Baby Shark is as confused as everybody else as they try to determine exactly what is happening and who is leaving the trail of bodies behind as Savannah is located and then lost again. Baby Shark knows only one thing—she must protect Savannah! No matter what or who gets in the way.

Unfortunately, that could actually be her lover, Lee, who happens to be a law officer who expects her to follow all the legal rules that he does in protecting the innocent! It is a constant struggle, for Baby Shark knows, “we work on the edge of the law, and...it gets blurry out there were Otis and I deal with things.” (p. 198) And Baby Shark just doesn’t think she can trust Lee...

Admit it, readers! This sounds like that exciting novel into which you want to escape this weekend! Well, you’ll be right! This book is highly recommended for lovers of action thrillers!

So, excuse me, now...I’m going back to start reading: Baby Shark—first book in what I expect will be Robert Fate’s fantastic series! You might want to start at the beginning... but, no problem, High Plains Redemption stands alone as a great addition, so wherever you meet her, I think you’ll thoroughly enjoy Baby Shark!

G. A. Bixler
Independent Professional Book Reviewer

Very good book, actually rated it at 41/2 stars½

Oh Baby, Baby. She is back, all rough, tough and soft around the edges. Kristin Van Dijk, who we met in Baby Shark, has returned to her crime fighting, but now she is Otis' partner in his PI business.

Kristin and Otis are hired to locate and rescue a kidnapped girl, who ends up more difficult to find and keep than they expected. What seemed like a simple rescue mission becomes convoluted case of deception, greed and dishonor.

In this installment of Kristen's adventures it is the characters that take center stage. Baby Shark introduced us to the main characters but that book was driven by the action, the violence. Beaumont Blues has taken the promise of the first one and given the characters a chance to grow. It is no less exciting, no less blood stained than the first one, but it also shows a maturity in development. It would have be easy for Robert Fate to rest on the momentum of Baby Shark, to recreate the "little lost girl fights back" theme but he was able to step back and let her mature. Otis has a bigger role this time as the friendly boss and father figure, and he fills it well. The assorted other characters that blast their way through the action are well drawn with Fate's usual tongue in cheek spin on motive and morality.

But, of course, it is also the action driven plot that makes this a one sitting book. As the action progresses faster than a bullet, or is that as fast as the numerous bullets, it maintains the velocity of non stop suspense and thrills. It still can have scenes such as "It looked as if we were in the middle of a Popeye comic strip with all the bodies strewn about. But it was no cartoon, it was a slaughterhouse. Blood everywhere." Kristin has matured, not mellowed. The ending is satisfyingly unexpected, with the humor that makes these books so creative and welcomed.

Next up is Baby Shark's Panhandle Caravan (name change Mr. Fate? What happened to Sooner Weekends?). It will be interesting to see what Robert Fate has planned next for Kristin and Otis.

Kristen Van Dijk's life is a bit unusual for a 17 year old girl in the 1950, going from pool hall to pool hall with her pool hustling father. But it all ends in a rural bar when a group of bikers show up to get revenge over a lost pool game. When it is all over Kristen's father and the bar owner are brutally murdered, the owner's father, Henry, is left for dead and Kristen herself is barely alive after a repetitive beatings and rape. But the police are in no hurry to solve the murder of a lowly pool hustler or the rape of a girl who, by even being in a pool hall, must have asked for it. The murder of the Chinese bar owner and the fact that they burned down the bar does not seem to matter much to the local lawmen either. The lost report on the whole happening is even more suspicious.

Henry brings Kristen home with him to recover in peace, hidden away on his back country ranch. There they decide that the killers of their family members must be brought to justice- if the law will not do it they will take care ofn it themselves. Kristen works to get her strength up both physically and mentally. She runs, learns to shoot a gun and, to become Baby Shark, play pool like a pro. With the help of PI Otis Millet they begin to track down the bikers who did the killings. But someone is definitely trying to protect the bikers, especially the one they call Blue Eyes, and it is up to Kristen, Otis and Henry to figure out who is interfering with their plans. And Kristen must discover if she can carry through on their plan for revenge.

This book should cause quite a discussion with its unusual heroine. Robert Fate has used first person voice to pull the reader into Kristen's world. This works to not only raise his audience's sympathy for a cold blooded killer, but causes them to stand up and cheer for her. The style of writing is cool and sparse to match the tone of the story. The characters are well defined without a lot of background to clutter up the pace. This makes it a full out run to the end, no stopping reading in between chapters.

This is an exciting debut for this author and we are glad he is not done here. We are now looking forward to spring of 2007 for Baby Sharks' Beaumont Blues and later for Baby Shark's Sooner Weekends. It will be interesting to see how Robert Fate continues Kristen's story after she has exacted her revenge. Maybe a chance for romance? But it is hard to imagine Baby Shark settling for a life in the mainstream.

(Wonder how long it will take movie producers to get ahold of these rights? Perfect combination of chick flick with blood gushing action- something for everyone. )

Long, long ago, before graphic novels, there were comics. Superman, Archie, Little Lulu, Sergeant Fury and His Howling Commandos. These comics all carried the Comics Code seal on their covers. (Go to
http://lambiek.net/comics/code.htm for an illustrated history of the Comics Code). Even longer ago than that, when I was very young (but could already read), there were the lurid, scary, and sometimes morally reprehensible pre-Comics Code comics. I have a fairly vivid memory of encountering some of these in Texas, where I lived at age 5 and 6.

This memory keeps returning to me whenever I read one of Robert Fate's BABY SHARK books. For one thing, they are set in Texas in the 1950s. But
chiefly, it is the sense of transgression in them. Even Baby Shark herself occasionally stops and thinks "What did I just do? What have I become?"

In BABY SHARK'S BEAUMONT BLUES, the second in the series, Kristin VanDijk (Baby Shark for her youth and pool prowess, although there's
precious little time for pool-shooting in this outing) and her partner and mentor, Otis Millett, spray blood around in a manner worthy of one of those old comics with "CRIME" in big letters on the cover. We always know that Kristin and Otis are on the side of the angels. They will go out of their way to protect the vulnerable and are strictly honest with money they may find "lying around." Yet, they use any means necessary to fight evil, and they are expert at using the mobsters' own criminal tendencies to defeat them. Part of the reason this works is the setting in place and time. It's quite believable that the rich and powerful (even when their gains are exceedingly ill-gotten) can consider themselves above the law, either because of corruption or simply that they have the police outgunned.

In the first book, BABY SHARK, Kristin's actions were motivated by her personal need to see some kind of justice done to those who killed her
father and left her, raped and beaten, for dead. In BABY SHARK'S BEAUMONT BLUES, she's using the skills she acquired at that time as a
licensed private investigator. A "simple" task of retrieving a teenage heiress -- kidnapped or runaway? -- turns into a complicated and bloody
mess where even Kristin and Otis are not always sure who's conning whom. The ending is satisfying and there is even a possible romance brewing
for Kristin.

Mr. Fate's ear for dialogue is unerring and his ability to write from the perspective of a young woman is almost uncanny. Just one small example -- each time Kristin returns home after the latest bloodbath, she never fails to put any salvageable clothing to soak in cold water to get the bloodstains out!

It's often with some trepidation that I read a second book by an author whose first I've enjoyed. There was no disappointment here. I highly recommend BABY SHARK'S BEAUMONT BLUES.

Protagonist: newly licensed PI Kristin Van Dijk
Setting: 1956--the area between Dallas and Beaumont, Texas
Series: #2

First Line: Leon drooled when he smiled at me.

In this second book in the series, newly licensed PI Kristin Van Dijk and her partner, former cop Otis Millett, are investigating the disappearance of an heiress who's slated to inherit millions from her daddy's oil fields. In no time at all, gangsters from Beaumont have shoehorned their way into the situation and the body count rises and rises and rises.

If you don't like violence, stay away from these books. For the most part, it doesn't bother me, but the entire plot of the book seemed rather tired. I also began keeping track of Kristin's ability to hear because it wasn't consistent throughout the book. The only reason I rated it as high as I did was because I still like the characters of Kristin and Otis.

What a pleasant surprise! I had my doubts about this book despite - or perhaps because of - the abundant charm of its author. I'm suspicious of people who arrive at writing as the latest in a long series of careers (though I suppose that describes me too to some extent) but in this case RF arrived at fiction-writing ready and armed to get down to it.

This is the best book yet for pure vicarious kick-ass vengeance fantasy - and for that alone I love it.

Every darn character in Baby Shark is a loveable keeper, and that's saying something when their hearts are as dark and vengeance-bent as these. I'm glad RF didn't shy away from the horror of the precipitating crime. It needed to be every bit as horrible as it was. I'm equally glad he didn't pansy up the resolution, either. The bad guys were dispatched violently to hell, and Kristen & crew didn't waste a lot of time cryin over it. Second thoughts and ruined souls play hell with the reader's vicarious thrill, IMHO - when I feel like Mad Max, I want to stomp around with conviction, not hesitate with moral compunctions. Kristen is glad to see her tormentor suffer, and that read right - it would be false for her to equivocate and put him out of his misery.

How about this line;
"I had relinquished an irreplaceable piece of my humanity when I chose revenge."

This is the quality that will set Kristen up well for further ventures.

How I adored Henry! And Jim (the dog) - and Otis. And all the secondary characters. Even MacKenzie, dullard admirer, was well-turned-out. Even the cars have personalities.

I have no idea how RF manages to write 19 YO female so convincingly, but I'm glad he does.½