Book Rec of the Day 4/9/2007

“The killing took place at dawn and as usual it was a decapitation, accomplished by a single, vicious swipe.”

It’s an opening line that promises you’ll be up all night finishing this story of the Great White sharks who live off the coast of the Farallon Islands, due west of San Francisco—in one single, engrossing read. Casey’s reporting on the predators and the people who study them is rigorous. And her prose is utterly irresistible: “The dorsal fin of myth and nightmare rose from below and came tunneling toward them like a German U-Boat...” Come on in! The water’s fine.

THE DEVIL’S TEETH: A TRUE STORY OF OBSESSION AND SURVIVAL AMONG AMERICA’S GREAT WHITE SHARKS, by Susan Casey (Owl Books, 2006)