REVIEW: Baby Shark's High Plains Redemption

Title: Baby Shark's High Plains Redemption
Author: Robert Fate
ISBN: 9780979996023/Capital Crime Press
Protagonist: Kristin Van Dijk AKA Baby Shark
Setting: Texas and Oklahoma, 1957
Series: #3
Rating: B+

First Line: My headlights caught a weather-beaten sign.

When Baby Shark and her partner Otis Millett are hired to deliver the ransom for Savannah Smike, the piano-playing girlfriend of an Oklahoma bootlegger, they almost immediately discover that it's kill or be killed. They've gotten themselves smack dab in the middle of a feud between two rival bootlegging clans.

Author Robert Fate knows how to write a roller coaster of a plot that keeps the pages turning and keeps you concerned about the two main characters. The violence quota is high in these books, but I don't find it gratuitous. This third book in the series can be read as a standalone, but it would be better to start at the beginning with Baby Shark in order to understand why Kristin is the way that she is. The one thing that has concerned me with these books--the fact that Kristin tends to shoot first and not bother with questions--is addressed in this book in a way that is true to her character.

If you're in the mood for a book with lots of action, engaging characters and the flavor of Texas in the 1950's, you can't go wrong with Robert Fate's Baby Shark, and it looks as though the fourth book in the series is due out in May 2009. Good news indeed!