Hunger by William R Dantz

Tor Books 1992

William R Dantz is one of the pseudonyms of Rodman Philbrick who was born in 1951 and is still swimming the waters. He won the Shamus award for best original P.I. paperback in 1994 for his book Brothers and Sinners. He has written many young adult books most notably Freak the Mighty which was made into a movie titled simply The Mighty in 1998. There is an adorable video on Youtube where two children interview him about his children’s books where he answers questions like he’s talking to adults. His answers and insights are really interesting, and I hope it inspires the little ones. It’s cute.

Basic premise: Sealife Research Institute have been genetically engineering mako sharks to make them smarter and then training them to attack enemy divers and protect underwater missile silos for the government. The sharks escape their lagoon into the open ocean. A couple who run a diving tour business make it their mission to put an end to these sharks.

This is a 348 page book about a group of killer sharks and by page 7 they have already escaped their lagoon prison. Not. A. Bad. Start.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t go right into the bloodshed but eases us into the water with a little character building and backstory. Our heroes are Sally and Tom. They are a married couple who have a boat named Wild Child and a charter business of taking land lubbers out to scuba dive around the reefs of the Florida Keys. Tom is an amateur writer of reef life. Sally is an amateur marine biologist who basically inherited two dolphins that were once owned by the dastardly Sealife Research Institute. The dolphins are named Louis and Clark. They were obviously abused and have issues, but Sally is working on it.

Our antagonist is the diabolically determined Dr Speke. He is thin and tall with a wispy ponytail. I hate him already. He doesn’t care about anything but getting his precious sharks back in the lagoon and keeping his cushy government contract. Oh, and getting in his young female assistant’s pants. Both her and another employee have a half-conscious. They know some of this isn’t exactly cool, but they also know when it’s gone too far. There is also the wet brain alcoholic biogenetics engineer who thinks everything they’re doing is wrong, but he’s messed up his life so bad with drinking that there isn’t any other place for him to go.

The sharks are makos even though I’m pretty sure that’s a great white on the cover. They’re also not the size of a football field. There are six of them and they are all connected to each other. They reminded me of the Borg from Star Trek Next Generation. Like if one feels pain, they all do. There is a reason but it’s a spoiler, so I’ll leave it out. They have shark thoughts, logically work out problems and ponder.

The kills are few and far between. Descriptions of basic functions. There’s a lot of padding in this which is paradigm for this era of horror so we’ll cut ‘em some slack. There is even one part where a character keeps dragging their feet about showing Sally and Tom a diver’s picture of the sharks and Sally is like, “come on already!” And that’s how I felt a lot during this.

The sharks kill some divers, some fishermen, a hammerhead. There is an AWESOME scene where one of the shark straight shoots out of the water, and while flying over the boat, gobbles up a fisherman. When the attacks happen they’re good they just needed a whole lot more. One diver is so scared that his “anus contracts to the size of a pen point.”

There is some Jaws stuff but what are you going to do, it’s a book about killer sharks along the coast.

There is no way that the movie Deep Blue Sea wasn’t inspired by this book.

This was just ok. If they had trimmed the fat it could have been really fun. Also, it does take itself a little too seriously. Some good. Like they have responsible real world shark facts like most sharks don’t eat people and the ocean needs them. At the same time, it’s a shark book, schlock it up! The showcase showdown was not what I expected so that was a pleasant surprise.

Mako shark fact: There have only been ten attacks on humans between 1980 and 2024.

Shout out to Bryan from Bad Taste Books for sending me the book.

This book is available for free on archive.org