Lunch Room Surprises - Robert Fate Returns

I am ecstatic beyond reason - my pal Robert Fate has graced us with his presence here in the Lunch Room yet again. Bob's fourth Baby Shark book, Jugglers at the Border, is now available at your favorite bookseller.

Bob and I sat down and had a conversation about the Baby Shark series, and I learned a lot of really fascinating things I didn't know before about Kristin, Otis, and the story behind the stories. The iced tea's fresh and cold, so grab a seat and 'listen in.'

JB: Thanks so much, Bob, for coming back to the Lunch Room again – it's always so great to have you here!

We're going to talk about Jugglers at the Border, but first let's give our guests a quick rundown on Baby Shark's history. Tell us a little bit about Kristin, where she came from, and how she became Baby Shark. Sans too many spoilers, of course. ;)

BOB: J.B., I am so delighted to be here – let me put my menu down and pay attention. I agree with you – a little in front info about Baby Shark is a good idea. So – Kristin Van Dijk was born in the mid 1930s in a small rural town on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. Her father was "off at war" for a large part of her young life and her mother died of cancer when Kristin was in high school. She dropped out of school to be with her father and spent eighteen months "on the road" with him, traveling around Texas, sometimes living in his new Cadillac, as he made his iffy living hustling pool. Kristin and her dad actually spent more time parked beside the road reading books than shooting pool – and from Kristin's point of view, being with her father was more important than anything else happening in her life. When she was seventeen, their vagabond, pool-hustling life caught up with them. In one tragic event in a roadside pool hall out west of Abilene, Kristin's life was changed forever. That story is told in Baby Shark, book one in the Baby Shark Crime series.

Now, as to how Kristin became Baby Shark – well, that's because of her pool shooting ability. Like father, like daughter, Kristin became a pool hustler. Her nickname had always been Baby, but after she began cleaning out pool halls all over west Texas, she became Baby Shark. Also, after she trained for a couple of years at "taking care of herself," the name seemed particularly appropriate. Baby Shark carries knives and guns and knows how to use them.

Let's see – Kristin is five-eight, weighs 130, and has platinum blonde hair. In Jugglers at the Border, the most recent book in the series, she's 23 years old. She doesn't think of herself as pretty, but people say she is. She turns heads, so she probably is.

I hope I didn't just run on here, but I think you have the essentials now.

JB: Run on as much as you like – we can't get enough Baby Shark around here!

Since Jugglers at the Border features Kristin's partner, Otis Millett, so prominently, let's talk a little bit about their relationship. Otis pulled a lot of strings to get Kristin licensed as a P.I., which speaks to how highly he values her and her abilities. Considering this is 1950s Texas and she's female, this is a bit atypical of most men in that time, but Otis strikes me as a bit atypical anyway. Now that we know more about Kristin, can you tell us a little more about Otis? Obviously they make a great team, but what advantages did you see in putting these two characters together?

BOB: Okay – how about a quick sketch of Otis first?

Otis was born in a rural East Texas community in the early part of the twentieth century – twelve pounds at birth and over six feet tall by age fourteen. Fully grown he weighed 280 and was six five. He was raised on a dairy farm and could wrestle a heifer to the ground by the age of twelve. He was in grade school during World War I and during the Great Influenza Pandemic and had a clear memory of death happening all around him. He also remembered riding in horse and buggies when he was little, and how motorcars and trucks replaced that form of transportation. He rode to school and delivered newspapers on horseback, and recalled sleeping on his way home from those pursuits secure that his horse knew the way. He wore overalls during the week and knickers and long socks to church. He was one of three children. He had an older sister and a younger sister and a father that encouraged him to protect them. He told Otis, "The only fighting at school I'll put up with is if you are protecting the good name and honor of your mother and sisters." The Millett girls didn't marry until their brother left home, because every boy in the county was afraid of Otis.

After the Great Depression, Otis moved up to Dallas/Fort Worth and got into police work. He was in his twenties, tough as nails, and seriously honest; he made a good policeman. He was in his early thirties when he joined the Army. He was a Master Sergeant by the time he landed in France on D-Day. He was wounded at the Siege of Bastogne while single-handedly destroying a Nazi pillbox. He spent six months in a hospital in London, and returned to the Dallas PD in 1945. Less than a year later, he had earned the rank of Detective.

Otis was a married man. The first four books in the Baby Shark series each tell some part of his relationship with Dixie Logan, the Dallas Firecracker, as she was known on the Texas strip tease circuit. So, I won't repeat it here. Suffice it to say, his marriage to Dixie was the major turning point in Otis's life. She took him by storm, and he never got over her.

It was Otis' mother, Hattie May, who encouraged his addiction to caffeine and cigarettes. She smoked a pack a day and was a ten-cup-a-day coffee drinker. She outlived her husband and siblings and died with her boots on while striding to the milk barn at the age of 92. Otis adored her.

Otis entered Kristin's life shortly after her father's murder, and was instrumental in assisting her in locating the killers and making them pay for their vicious attack on her, her father, Henry Chin, and Henry's son Will. That was from 1952 to 1954. Shortly after that, Otis asked Kristin to be his partner at the Millett Agency. He saw in her the makings of a first rate detective and wanted to be her mentor. She was nineteen and he was in his late forties. Perhaps – though it's not easy to see into a man's heart – he may have thought Kristin needed a strong, positive male figure in her life.

But let's be honest, Kristin had several strong male figures to influence her after her father's untimely death. There was Henry, Harlan, Sarge, and Albert besides Otis. Each of these men helped shape her, each of these men helped blur the lines for her between law and justice. I think you could say that without them, she would not be the Baby Shark we have come to know.

JB: Yes, I think you could say that. In your third book, High Plains Redemption, we see a little bit more of Kristin's coming to grips with who she is and how she handles the necessary evil of killing people that she faces nearly every day. Let's talk a little about the progression of that into Jugglers at the Border. The killers she faces in the fourth book are a lot different from the ones she's faced before. Did that make it easier for Kristin to justify what she had to do?

BOB: The first killer Kristin faced in Jugglers was a cold-blooded sociopathic thief, a man who found it more expedient to kill and rob than just to rob. Taking life was of no concern to him. Kristin got the drop on him and tried reason, tried to talk him down, but he wasn't having it. From his point of view, she was just another problem that could be solved with murder. She realized her position was deteriorating and moved to control him by shooting him in the shoulder. The wound rendered his right arm useless, but didn't change his mind about killing her. The next few seconds – because these things seldom take more time than that – saw an exchange of gunfire that finalized their disagreement in Kristin's favor, but afterwards, it was clear it could have gone badly for her had he not made a mistake.

Kristin viewed killing the sociopath as self-defense. Lt. Lynch of the Fort Worth Police agreed with her and ruled the killing justified. However, Otis and Lt. Lynch both felt that Kristin was quick to the trigger. Then – Otis, just being himself, confused things by being proud of her killing skills.

Kristin's real problem is that she is good at what she does. She was an excellent student when she was being taught to kill and, when she is put in the position of having to decide how to act in the face of danger, her instincts take her to the extreme. She has said that she will never be taken advantage of again and that any fight she has is a fight to the death. She is working with her tendency to "overreact," but it is an uphill battle.

JB: I love how intimately you know your characters. Have you always known them this well or have you come to know them over the course of writing the books?

BOB: I remember thinking, before deciding to pen novels, that it was a truckload of bull when writers said their characters often told them what was correct to say or do. But four books into the Baby Shark series and I must admit Kristin, Otis, Henry, et al, have many times straightened me out about who they are and what they will and won't do or say. Henry, for instance, has worked too long and hard at learning English – especially mastering the idioms – not to expect his speech to improve from book to book, from 1952 to 1958. There are other examples like that one. Characters grow and change.

My writing habits contribute in a meaningful way to the surprises I confront at times in my stories. As you know, my story outlines are rudimentary at best, more just a mental list of events in a sequence that is often fluid. I also think about times, places – that is to say, scenes – and what I want to see accomplished by that point in the happenings. I couldn't prove it, but I think everything that happens is in the service of a distant goal, an ending that I hope for, that always seems to magically come to pass. One of the more peculiar things is how the correct length of the book happens without any conscious effort on my part. Somewhere around 280 pages, give or take a few, the story has been told. This was a page total that was suggested by my publisher for his own reasons. I agreed to it and have never thought about it again. Like I say, it just happens.

Reading the above, isn't it easy to believe what I have always contended – that is to say that I don't write these books at all. It's another guy. A guy who shows up and does all the work while I'm in alpha state. "Are you working?" my wife asks when she sees me staring out the window. I tell her yes, but in truth I'm doing nothing. It's that other guy who has his shoulder to the stone.

So, let's see – your question. Getting to know them is a process, I think. You know how I prefer allowing Kristin to tell the story so that she and the reader discover things at the same time? First person, it's called. Well, it's like that for these folks. We all kind of get to know them as we go along – you know Otis was raised in a rural Baptist house by parents who brought him up to respect things many people today not only don't respect, they don't even know they're supposed to respect them. A different world, you know? When Kristin becomes Otis' partner and he removes the words painted on the door to his office, it was because he was sensitive to something most people today wouldn't notice or even think about. Maybe you remember this little narrative from Kristin in Jugglers–

      The Millett Agency was painted in black letters on the frosted glass door of our office. When I became Otis’s partner, he removed the two words that had been lower on the glass.
      Otis felt that Suspicions Verified conjured up lascivious acts that would be inappropriate now that he had a female partner. I appreciated his sensitivity and was glad to see the words go, but for a different reason. I thought they narrowed our expertise.
      Exposing infidelity might make up the larger portion of our business, but it hardly described everything we did.

You see how much more practical – or modern, if you will – Kristin is than Otis? This was in the early fifties and Kristin is already pushing for women to be treated equally and Otis is still concerned about their feelings because they're women. He believes they should be treated differently, protected.

Do you remember in High Plains when Otis is in the hospital and Kristin tells him the baby girl he helped to birth has been named after him?

      "There was a baby girl," he said.
      "They named her after you. They call her Millie."
      It was just humming machinery for a stretch of time while he gazed at me. I was afraid he didn't understand until tears came to his eyes.
      He said, "She's gonna get a good education, Missy. That's how gals go places and get what's theirs. Education."

These are breakthrough moments in the development of these characters. Otis is seeing into the future. He's imagining a time when a woman can earn the same as a man. This was revolutionary thought in 1957. There are members of Congress who to this day vote against equal pay for women – fifty years after Otis dreamed of it for his tiny ward. He is a complex character when you watch him ask Kristin, a young female, to become his partner in a man's business, and then show a lack of sophistication by growing tongue-tied when he must converse with a nun who speaks French. The thing about Otis that keeps him steady in all our minds is he knows right from wrong. You can never trick him about that. He never gives a second thought to ridding the world of a bad guy.

So, to get back to your question again – it's a process. The characters are constantly introducing themselves. I don't know from one day to the next what they're going to say, but you can trust they are who they are.

You know what the problem is? You make it too comfortable in your lunchroom, the coffee is too good, and the atmosphere is so congenial. It's your fault I ramble on.

JB: Oh, I'm so sorry about that. I'll have to slack off a little bit from now on.

And now the last – and probably most burning – question, the one your fans are on tenterhooks over. Are we going to be seeing more of Kristin and Otis in the future?

BOB: Did I mention before that I am writing a standalone? There is a story I want to tell about a guy who makes a mistake without knowing he's done it, falls on the bad side of a mobster, and ends up on the run. I'm calling it Kill the Gigolo, a contemporary, third person tale with a male protagonist. This book is half finished, so things can change, but right now here is what the back cover would say–

Erik Lamar, a smooth-talking ladies' man, is on the run. Gangster Al Foley has a grudge to settle and only Erik's head will even the score. The Irish Mob is given an assignment: kill the gigolo.

When the mutilated corpse of Erik's friend, Freddy, is found dumped in the street, Erik gets the warning – what happened to Freddy was a Girl Scout demerit compared to what is planned for him.

But first, they have to catch him. One step ahead of Foley's thugs, Erik flies off to Mexico, thinking he has traded terror for a life of leisure. But it's not so easy: Lies and deceit become his way of life in the tropics. In no time losing his head becomes the least of his worries.

So, here's the thing, JB, in reference to Sharkdom, I'm already thinking about book five, the subject, the title, all of it – very different with Kristin doing some new things, big new things. But first, Kill the Gigolo, and then after that, a new Baby Shark story.

Be honest. Will slipping in the standalone book between Baby Shark books four and five make you totally bugnuts from the wait?

JB: Probably. But to paraphrase an author I know, talking about another author – "I'd read anything written by Robert Fate." Kill the Gigolo sounds like it'll be great too.

Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me today, Bob. It's truly a pleasure, as always, to be allowed to spend time picking that fascinating brain of yours!

Well, folks, that's the end of the Lunch hour for today. Don't forget to visit Bob's website to keep up with what's going on in Kristin's world, and we'll keep you posted on new Robert Fate books in the future. Thanks for hanging out with us today, and come back soon!

=) JB

P.S. - Read a book. It's good for you!