Beast - Hardcover

Benchley, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091751993 ISBN 13: 9780091751999

Publisher: Random House, 1991

Synopsis

When Whip Darling and Navy helicopter pilot Marcus Driver investigate the mysterious disappearance of a Connecticut couple off the coast of Bermuda, they uncover evidence of a legendary monster, forced from the ocean depths by pollution

About this title

From the Inside Flap

the shark from "Jaws" look like a pet goldfish . . ." USA Weekend
Straight from the cutting edge of science and the logs of ancient mariners comes an immense horror -- a creature that rises up from the well of an ocean gone mad with an insatiable hunger and an endless lust to kill. One man leads a harrowing struggle to defeat the beast amid a threatened Bermuda paradise. His name is Whip Darling, a down-and-out sea dog who doesn't know where he'll get his next meal -- or whether it will get him first.
From the Paperback edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

At least Benchley (Rummies, 1989, etc.) didn't call it Tentacles--although he might have. Seventeen years after Jaws chewed up the bookracks, he now weaves another ripping sea-monster yarn, this one about an Architeuthis dux, or giant squid, menacing Bermuda. Benchley puts a 90's ecological spin on his story--the squid is on the prowl because its food supply has been diminished by wanton overfishing--but at bottom this is just another Jaws retread, opening, as did Jaws, with a night attack by the monster (here, on a castaway sailing couple) and concluding, as did Jaws, with a daylight frontal assault on a ship and crew determined to destroy it. In between, there's no romantic subplot like the one Spielberg discarded for his film of Jaws; the narrative is full- tilt action adventure, beginning with hero Whip Darling, the 41- year-old Bermudan fisherman who identifies the squid from its traces after it kills a pair of young twin divers, children of Manhattan media magnate Osborn Manning. Knowledge of the squid sends Bermuda tourism--and Darling's business--into a nose dive, but when a vengeance-minded Manning, accompanied by a Canadian squid-expert, tries to hire Darling to help hunt the squid, the Bermudian refuses: better poor than dead. He does agree to guide a submersible party, including a journalist and an obnoxious politico, to the squid's most likely haunt, leading to a terrific scene in which the hungry squid--still not fully revealed--toys with the submarine, then cracks it open to enjoy human-on-the-half- shell. Finally, Manning uses financial blackmail to force Darling to the hunt. The extended conclusion, surpassing Jaws's for excitement, sees the 100-foot squid climbing onto Darling's boat, tentacles and whips flying, eyes glowering, beak chomping, as Manning meets a predictable Ahab-like fate and Darling fights for his life. Although necessarily lacking the shock value of Jaws, this crafty, well-researched, exhilarating semi-sequel, powered by that marvelously demonic squid, who's every bit a match for the Great White, is bound to clamber way high up on the best-seller lists. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0091751993
• ISBN 13: 9780091751999
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 358