Baby Shark [Paperback]

Baby Shark, a teenage girl, doesn't have the normal teenage evenings. Baby's are spent in pool halls, where she watches her father shark for a living. But one night, Baby's father bucks the wrong gang. He's murdered, along with the son of the proprietor, and Baby Shark is raped, beaten and left for dead. Most young girls, if they recovered at all, would be traumatized by this for the rest of their lives, probably hover in the shadows, stay close to walls, and avoid the eyes of oncoming people.

Not our Baby Shark. She heals and vows revenge. Housed by the proprietor of the bar that was trashed and burned, the man who lost his son, he secures martial arts and guns experts to mentor his protege, while she seeks out the best pool training in the land. Meanwhile, a sleazy private eye friend of the bar owner has been tracking down the gang.

When she's ready, Baby Shark swoops out of the deep and delivers fatal bites tailored to each participant in the crime.

This is no normal book of revenge. This book seethes; it burns. The reader revels in the cold revenge Baby Shark dispenses. I couldn't put this book down.

The finest read I've enjoyed in many moons. A marvelously spare writing style, tremendous sense of character and a plot that is a compellingly original reworking of a script dating at least to Homer, Baby Shark has a screenplay feel,in the very best sense. The plot stays on message, the dialogue drives the plot, the characters LEAP off the page in technicolor, and the result is even more than the sensational parts. Any man or woman who remembers what it was like to push the bounds of convention in the 50s and 60s will treasure this book. Yet Fate's contemporary style appeals to Gen-Xers as well!

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. )

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