THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 17, 1994 TAG: 9407130406
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY SHIRLEY PRESBERG
LENGTH: Short : 46 lines
WHITE SHARK
PETER BENCHLEY
Random House. 324 pp. $23.
IT WAS AS large as an ape and gray as ash. Through the blood that covered its face they saw the glitter of steel teeth, and through the gore that dripped from its hands, long steel claws.
Thus Peter Benchley presents in his new novel, White Shark, the latest threat to humanity: ``Jaws'' with claws.
Mutilated bodies surface in a coastal town in Connecticut, and marine biologist and shark expert Simon Chase contends that the killings were done by something more sinister than a shark. But that doesn't prevent him from placing himself and his son in danger at every opportunity.
After conveniently meeting the only person who knows the creature's history, Chase learns that it was constructed by a Nazi who tried to create a new race of amphibious warriors. The Nazi and his invention sank in a U-boat accident in 1945; when the submarine is rediscovered in 1996, the creature escapes.
Not content with creating havoc in the ocean, the beast figures out how to change from a sea monster into a land demon. In one of the few diverting sequences in the novel, it spouts green liquid from its mouth and then ``willed its gills to close.''
Benchley's idea of creating tension is to alternate chapters in which someone gets attacked with chapters in which someone escapes. Even when he builds momentum, he often disrupts it with lectures about the environment or the value of sharks.
White Shark is Jaws with way too many flaws. MEMO: Shirley Presberg is a Norfolk writer. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
``White Shark'' author Peter Benchley
by CNB