First and most critical of all is the “rogue shark” concept. You said that Steve apparently consulted some authority before taking this new tack. I, too, have consulted authorities, and my sources agree with me that the concept is totally absurd. I’ll be glad to argue specifics any time, but rather than write you a thesis here and now, I’d prefer to offer one artistic argument against the rogue-shark thing: if you present this shark as a world-girdling maniac, responsible for nearly every recorded shark-attack death, you destroy one of the central horrors of the story—namely that a shark doesn’t have to be deranged to eat people. Eating people is normal, instinctual behavior for great white sharks. There is profound terror in the normalcy of killing.

Also, to have Hooper claim to have tagged this shark reduces its menace and mystery. It makes the shark approachable and familiar.

That leads me to Hooper, who, in general, strikes me as an insufferable, pedantic little schmuck—not only pedantic, but ignorantly so, since many of the things he says about sharks are either misleading or flatly wrong. He sounds like a textbook full of errors. Again, I’ll cite chapter and verse to anyone who cares to listen.

Now, on to a few specific things that bothered me. I have tried to avoid picking nits (things like the horseshoe crabs). And the things that trouble me least (which you may well consider nits) I’ve saved for last.

Ellen’s gimmick with the travel brochures seems phony as hell. First of all, it’s a terrible cliche. Second, if she’s married to Brody, she should realize what his position is. She comes off as a nag, and since she vanishes almost immediately, we’re left with a vague, unresolved sense that Brody has an unhappy marriage.

P. 13—Meadows’ speech about sharks and their swim bladders is wrong. He’s mixing apples and oranges, and he compounds the felony by saying, “Don’t you know anything about them?”

P. 40—Hooper would never be suckered into believing that a ten-foot blue shark killed those people. Never.

P. 44—Brody seems here to be disbelieving the blue-shark theory. When did he change his mind?

P. 48—And when did Hooper suddenly change his mind about the blue shark as a possible killer?

P. 55—Hooper claims to have seen the white shark before, and at close range. So how come he says it’s only 17 feet long?

P. 65—Hooper says of the shark, “It knows where you live.” He is anthropomorphizing, something that he would be the first to argue against. God, he’s an inconsistent character!

P. 78—What suddenly changes Brody from a man terrified of the water to a man eager to join Quint? I remember discussing this change-of-heart at great length. It seems to have been resolved by ignoring it.

The following are relatively minor:

P. 5—The bloody billboard is still there, I see. I feebly repeat that it is way out of character for the town.

P. 23—Someone named Denherder makes a reference to a sporting charter on Valentine’s Day. I know of no one on the East Coast who would go fishing on February 14th, for, among other reasons, there are no game fish around on February 14th.