Jaws (Novel)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Jaws is a 1974 novel by Peter Benchley. It tells the story of a great white shark that preys upon a tourist resort, and the voyage of three men to kill it. Benchley was inspired by several real-life incidents, such as the several great white sharks caught in the 1960s off Long Island and Block Island by the Montauk charterboat captain Frank Mundus and the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 that resulted in four deaths over 12 days. Doubleday commissioned him to write the novel. Film producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown read the novel before its publication and bought the film rights. They helped raise the novel's profile and when it was published in February 1974 it became a great success, staying on the bestseller list for some 44 weeks.