Robert Fate

Product details

• File Size:591 KB
• Print Length:269 pages
• Publisher:Robert Bealmear; Second Edition (March 24, 2012)
• Publication Date:March 24, 2012
• Sold by:com Services LLC
• Language:English
• ASIN:B007ON5KVK

Product details

• Paperback:280 pages
• Publisher:Capital Crime Pr; First Edition (May 15, 2007)
• Language:English
• ISBN-10:0977627624
• ISBN-13:978-0977627622

Author’s Amazon.com page

Blurb:

Story opens in September 1956 –– When a Texas oil heiress goes missing and bodies begin to fall it is up to newly-licensed P.I. Kristin Van Dijk and her cantankerous partner, Otis Millett, to confront dangerous Beaumont gangsters, prying Dallas cops, slick crooked lawyers, and a buxom waitress who smells like Evening in Paris. This is an anything-but-straightforward Baby Shark crime adventure that hits the ground running for its life from bullet-riddled page one to a hell-of-a-surprise climax you never saw coming

My Review:

She’s back and I’m crushing again. Kristin Van Dijk aka Baby Shark has been through hell and she’s back stronger. Yes, that is very cliché. She’s such a strong female character during a time when, let’s face it, woman weren’t allowed much individual freedom.

I’m thrilled there’s more than the three books I have because I do not want this character, her friends, and their stories to end.

I could keep gushing and just post this review now. The story is as straightforward as you can get from the blurb. The writing is tight, crisp, and the humour is always an undertone and blatant.

I do feel there’s a catch to the ending coming so back to reading. Slight catch, but not sharing.

It feels like I’m cheating if I stop the review now, with more than half the total word count being taken up with book information and the blurb. There’s not much else I can tell you as to why you should go read Robert Fate’s Baby Shark series.

And with those words I suddenly think…Mike Hammer. A female, politer, Mike Hammer. Okay, not so much noir or anything, but a plain old fashion classic detective story of the good guys going after the bad guys and winning. I could get mushy and talk about how Kristin has overcome so much, which she has, but that’s her past. It happened and she’s healing on towards healed. She’s smart. She’s tough. She hasn’t given up.

She’s got guts when women weren’t supposed to, but then again, there are other female characters here with guts, too. Mr. Fate has captured them without losing anything female about them. And that reads sexist. What I’m trying to write is that his characters are beyond their author. Mr. Fate has written characters who could walk off the pages and be believed. Heck, I wish they would.

You know I love this series and now I’m going to go start the next book.

Baby Shark’s High Plains Redemption

by Robert Fate

Blurb :

May 1957––When Kristin Van Dijk aka Baby Shark and Otis Millett are hired to deliver the ransom for redheaded Savannah Smike, the mysterious piano-playing girlfriend of an Oklahoma bootlegger, they find themselves involved in more trouble than they bargained for. It is kill or be killed from day one.

Who wants Savannah so badly they are willing to murder anyone who gets in the way? That is the mystery Kristin and Otis confront in what becomes a no-holds-barred struggle between two feuding outlaw clans.

This action-crime-adventure is quintessential Baby Shark. It careens across two states, leaving a trail of blood and destruction from the tough side of Fort Worth through the southern Ozarks of Oklahoma to the lonesome high plains of the Texas panhandle.

My Review:

This is my first time experiencing Mr. Fate’s writing and I feel I’ve come home. I’m a major fan of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, not that Baby Shark is Mike Hammer. No, I think Hammer would give this lady a wide berth. Kristin Van Dijk is no nonsense, tough, but never abrasive. Her loyalty to Otis and her reputation comes across clear and well-earned.

Baby Shark is not a cozy read. This is a gritty, time period, no punches pulled, out and out head on fight. The characters are no way sugar coated. Some might say the characters are stereotypes of perceived tough guys; however, stereotypes never read true. These are characters shaped by their experiences, those around them, and life in general. Mr. Fate’s writing is simply straightforward.

Because this is my first reading of Baby Shark, I am missing some background on her. Every series builds its characters, adds more, shows more. Some of Baby Shark I’ve had to fill in for myself and I don’t think I’ve been far off the mark. Mr. Fate’s secondary characters are…will fans get mad if I use the word, fun? They are, fun that is. The secondary characters are fun. I believe them and while I might not want to meet any in real life, here within the pages I like them.

This is a writer’s strength. Being able to bring any character alive and have the reader want them to be real. To forget they’re not.

Baby Shark isn’t going to be for everyone and even for me; I’ll read more cozies between each Baby Shark. Nevertheless, I’ll revisit and live precariously within Mr. Fate’s pages.

Baby Shark: Jugglers at the Border (Book 4)

By Robert Fate

Product details

Publication date: March 24, 2012

File size: 559 KB

Word Wise: Enabled

Publisher: Robert Bealmear; Second Edition (March 24, 2012)

Print length: 280 pages

ASIN: B007ON5M3G

Product details

Paperback: 287 pages

ASIN: B00FBBQKYS

Publisher: Capital Crime Press (January 1, 2009)

Author’s Amazon.com page

Blurb:

Story opens in October 1958 –– Kristin Van Dijk, a private investigator, is twenty-three and a proven asset to Otis Millett, her veteran partner at the Millett Agency in Fort Worth, Texas. She lives above a pool hall, hustles nine ball in her spare time, and has an on-again off-again boyfriend named Lee, a homicide detective for the Dallas PD. When Otis estranged wife, Dixie Logan aka The Dallas Firecracker, as she was known on the Texas striptease circuit, is found murdered it begins an investigation that pairs Kristin and Otis with Lt. Carl Lynch, a straight-arrow homicide detective with the Fort Worth PD. This blending of by the book and fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants investigative styles leads to results in spite of itself, bringing Kristin up close and way too personal with a ruthless cop-killing gang of bank robbers and their boss, a dreamy maniac who hears voices. Is it simply greed that leads to a string of murders, including Dixie s? That is the suspicion when it is discovered the money that was taken in the bank heist has disappeared. Who has it? Where did it go? And if not greed, what is the motive for the double-cross that gets Dixie murdered and sends Kristin and Otis across West Texas in pursuit of her killer? Once again bad men learn too late they should take Baby Shark seriously. She’s not a girl to be pushed around.

My Review:

Otis has a wife!?

Another successful story told. Another escape read of tracking the bad guy and getting payback, mostly the legal way.

An unexpected surprise that pulls and adds depth to what some might call top-layered characters.

I don’t know many people who read classic style gumshoe stories. Not one word of politically correct thought and still the Baby Shark books are on the money for fairness, respect, and acceptance. People are exactly who they are as they present themselves to Kristin and Otis.

It’s what attracted me to the Mike Hammer books, even Louis L’Amour westerns, the blunt, by-your-word/handshake, no game playing characters. It’s not about men being men and women being women, far from those stereotypes, even for basic period fiction.

There’s a simple straightforward story in which the good guys win and the bad guys get punched in the face and put away. The heroes and heroines stand up for the innocent. There aren’t many books like these that I’ve seen lately.

And for the female characters, like Baby Shark, they are not gussied-up, written as one dimensional unbelievable dolls batting their eyes at every other guy (well, only if need be). Kristin throws punches and shots just as easily as anyone else…okay, maybe it would be better if she didn’t shoot as often as the others, but, hey, that’s the story time.

Plus, it is refreshing to see some female characters written as using their feminine wiles. Getting the better of the men by batting their eyes and pleading helplessness, it’s kinda fun reading a male character getting bested by his own idiotic ideas of what a woman is/should be.

So, this review may not tell you much about Baby Shark’s Jugglers at the Border and why I enjoyed it and recommend it. If you have enjoyed any of Mr. Fate’s previous Baby Shark’s books, you will enjoy this one as well. It’s a bit more of the same, a bit of advancement of the characters, and a few surprises, besides Otis having a wife.

Now, please excuse me while I start reading Baby Shark’s Showdown at Chigger Flats.

Happy Reading.

Product details

ASIN: ‎ B008MO6Q6I

Publisher: ‎ Robert Bealmear; First edition (July 17 2012)

File size: ‎ 592 KB

Simultaneous device usage: ‎ Unlimited

Print length: ‎ 256 pages

Author’s Amazon.com page

Blurb:

The story opens in May 1960 –– After ten years behind bars, the bloodthirsty murderer Walter Fairchild breaks out of a Texas prison with revenge on his mind, and the cantankerous, Fort Worth private eye Otis Millett is at the top of his list. After several failed attempts to kill Otis, the Fairchild clan finally finds success in kidnapping him.

This doesn’t sit well with Otis’ partner, Kristin Van Dijk aka Baby Shark, who forms a fragile bond with law enforcement agencies across Texas to rescue him before he is tortured and killed. Kristin is a lethal handful at the best of times, but threatening Otis puts her in a particularly dangerous frame of mind. Get ready for some quintessential Baby Shark action-adventure as Kristin, Henry Chin, and a U.S. Marshall with pale green eyes go hunting for trouble in the oilfields of West Texas.

My Review:

What a start! What did they do now?

Product details

• Print length : 266 pages
• File size : 939 KB
• Publication date : October 31, 2013
• Publisher : Robert Bealmear; First Edition (October 31, 2013)
• Word Wise : Enabled
• Language: : English
• ASIN : B00GCYQHMS
• Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
• Text-to-Speech : Enabled
• X-Ray : Not Enabled
• Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
• Screen Reader : Supported
• Lending : Enabled

Author’s Amazon.com page

Blurb:

The story opens in June 1961 in Fort Worth, Texas –– Kristin Van Dijk aka Baby Shark takes action to rid the world of two men who have raped and murdered a thirteen-year-old girl. After teasing death to accomplish her goal, Kristin must face the wrath of Otis Millett, her partner, and Lt. Carl Lynch, Lead Homicide Detective at FWPD, two friends that are concerned about her wrong-headed, reckless behavior.

She is given a dressing down, and told she needs a change of scenery and time to get her head on straight, time to work out the issues that are driving her toward self-destruction. “Talk to a professional,” Lynch advises. “Face your demons, pull it together,” Otis suggests. Both men propose that she get away for a few weeks, shoot some pool, try to remember how to relax.

And so begins the sixth book of the Baby Shark series: Kristin, now twenty-six, on “vacation” with loaded guns and pool cues. What could go wrong?

After a “stop and go” at Henry Chin’s to fine tune her pool and pistol skills, she heads south to “live off the land.” Her plan is to earn her keep shooting 9-ball in pool parlors from San Angelo to San Antonio, where she’ll meet up with Deputy U.S. Marshal Coit Bowden, her boyfriend with the light green eyes. Some time alone with him can’t be bad for her.

But life is not so simple, and the journal Henry has asked her to keep of her travels begins filling with dangerous encounters and remarkable characters, including the Grass Widow, an ex-WWII pilot who reminds Kristin of her mother.

My Review: