White Shark is a 1994 novel by author Peter Benchley

Peter Benchley

Peter Bradford Benchley was an American author, best known for his novel Jaws and its subsequent film adaptation, the latter co-written by Benchley and directed by Steven Spielberg...

, famous for Jaws

Jaws (novel)

Jaws is a 1974 novel by Peter Benchley. It tells the story of a great white shark that preys upon a small resort town, and the voyage of three men to kill it....

, The Island

The Island (1979 novel)

The Island is a novel by Peter Benchley, published in 1979 by Doubleday & Co.-Plot summary:Blair Maynard, a divorced journalist in New York City, decides to write a story about the unexplained disappearance of yachts and other small boats in the Caribbean, hoping to debunk theories about the...

, Beast

The Beast

- Fictional character :* The Beast is the imagined monster in William Golding's Lord of the Flies* The Beast , a fictional demon in the TV series Angel* Beast , a fictional character in the Marvel Comics universe...

and The Deep. It is similar to Jaws, but it does not feature a shark, unlike the title suggests. To avoid confusion, and to cash in on the movie adaption (see below), the book was re published as Creature in 1997.

Plot

A quiet Long Island

Long Island

Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...

 fishing community is suddenly struck with terror when an amphibious

Amphibious

Amphibious means able to use either land or water. In particular it may refer to:*Amphibious warfare, warfare carried out on both land and water*Amphibians, vertebrate animals of the Class Amphibia...

 beast created by a mad

Insanity

Insanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms, including becoming a danger to themselves and others, though not all such acts are considered insanity...

 Nazi scientist

Scientist

A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...

 is unleashed on the town. Dr. Simon Chase, a struggling man who leaves his wife and child to finish school at a Marine Biology

Marine biology

Marine biology is the scientific study of organisms in the ocean or other marine or brackish bodies of water. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather...

 science institute sees his son, Max for the first time in twelve years. A crew tracking a pregnant Great White

Great white shark

The great white shark, scientific name Carcharodon carcharias, also known as the great white, white pointer, white shark, or white death, is a large lamniform shark found in coastal surface waters in all major oceans. It is known for its size, with the largest individuals known to have approached...

 (ironically named "Jaws") spot a porpoise

Porpoise

Porpoises are small cetaceans of the family Phocoenidae; they are related to whales and dolphins. They are distinct from dolphins, although the word "porpoise" has been used to refer to any small dolphin, especially by sailors and fishermen...

 with a claw gash in its tail and see massive kills of sea life; when they then observe the same claw marks on Jaws herself, Chase knows that there must be something big out there to attack a great white. Dr. Amanda Macy, who studies whales using sea lions with strapped-on video cameras, allows herself to actually see the creature firsthand. Macy's camera gets a shot of a clawed hand attacking a fish. After additional horrific and bloody encounters at sea, the beast comes ashore, endangering the entire town. Now it's up to Chase to try and stop the creature before it kills off the entire town, and eventually move on...

Film Adaption

White Shark was made into a tv movie called Creature in 1997. The film was set at a top secret island military base

Military base

A military base is a facility directly owned and operated by or for the military or one of its branches that shelters military equipment and personnel, and facilitates training and operations. In general, a military base provides accommodations for one or more units, but it may also be used as a...

 instead of a science lab, however. It starred Craig T. Nelson

Craig T. Nelson

Craig Theodore Nelson is an American actor. He is probably best known for his Emmy-winning roles as Hayden Fox on the TV series Coach, and as Steve Freeling in the 1982 film Poltergeist. He also starred in The Incredibles in 2004 as Mr...

 as Simon Chase, and Kim Catrall as Dr. Amanda Mason (instead of Mace). It was primarily filmed on the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 island of St. Lucia and Vancouver. To cash in on the movie, and to avoid confusion with sharks, the book was re published as Creature in 1997.