Reviewing: "Baby Shark's Jugglers At The Border" by Robert Fate

October 1958 finds Kristen Van Dijk, aka Baby Shark, once again hard at work as a private investigator. Partnered with private investigator Otis Millet, she still prefers to let her guns do the talking for her. Some folks just can’t be reasoned with other than at the muzzle of a roaring gun. Both Baby Shark and her guns have had a lot of practice in the series so far and this fourth book promises more of the same.

After wrapping up the last pieces of one case, the next one is going to be hard to deal with. Otis has always been very quiet about his past and it comes as a shock that he has a wife. A wife that he never divorced and hasn’t seen in years. Back when she used to be a stripper she went by the moniker of “The Dallas Firecracker” but to Otis she was Dixie. She has a different name now but there is no mistaking the fact that it is her body lying in the Tarrant County Morgue. After identifying the body, Otis wants answers and Lt. Carl Lynch of the Fort Worth Homicide division has few answers. Obviously, it was a homicide considering both her and the male she was with in her apartment took numerous slugs from a Walther PPK, but beyond that Detective Carl Lynch has little evidence and few clues. The Fort Worth Homicide Detective is pleased, at least initially, to have the help of Otis and Baby Shark.

As if he ever had a choice.

In a quest for answers that leads back and forth across Texas and New Mexico, Otis and Baby Shark follow a trail of deceit and treachery. When things begin to turn sideways they let their guns settle the matter in their favor. This latest installment continues the violent series that contains some of the best hardboiled characters written these days. While Baby Shark and Otis have been pretty much fleshed out to this point in the present time of the 50s, the read provides plenty of backstory into Otis long before he met Baby Shark. As such, it explains much of who he is and how he views life. Along the way there is plenty of mystery, action and gunplay to keep readers highly entertained. Coming in September, this is one book you absolutely do not want to miss.

If, somehow, you have missed this hardboiled series, start with the violent and very good beginning in “Baby Shark.”



Follow that up with “Baby Shark’s Beaumont Blues” and then “Baby Shark’s High Plains Redemption.” Simply good stuff.


Baby Shark’s Jugglers At The Border
Robert Fate
http://www.robertfate.com
Capital Crime Press
http://www.capitalcrimepress.com/
September 2009
ISBN#0-9799960-2-3
Trade Paperback
287 Pages
$14.95


ARC provided by the author in exchange for my objective review.



Kevin R. Tipple © 2009