Recently read - BABY SHARK by Robert Fate

[Kerrie]

Remarkably good for a debut novel. Robert Fate's own rich background of experience comes through. Baby Shark is "seventeen going on thirty" in her father's words. At a time when other girls her age are buying clothes and having their nails and hair done, Kristin van Dijk, aka Baby Shark, is pursuing killers and wreaking revenge. At seventeen Kristin sees her father killed in a Texas pool room by some bikies, and is then raped and beaten herself. She survives with incredible injuries, and is befriended by Henry, the pool room owner whose son was also killed. When the police fail to take action, together Henry and Baby come up with a scheme to track the bikies down themselves and deal with them. It involves Kristin becoming a billiards expert, learning to shoot, and having training in martial arts from experts such as former friends of her father, and people whom Henry has heard of. Quite a different sort of book set in the 1950s. Somewhere I saw it described as an "adventure thriller" although there are elements of mystery, and some surprises for the reader. The threads of the book are all tied nicely off but we are left in no doubt that there is a second in the series - there is a taste tempter in the back of this one. My rating 4.5