In The Slick Of The Cricket

The Story

In his forty years of charter-boat fishing off the shores of Long Island, Frank Mundus, captain of the Cricket II, has hauled in more terrifying multiton, multifanged great white sharks than anyone around. Unwittingly playing Ishmael to the Cricket's Ahab, local newspaperman Russell Drumm set out to accompany Mundus on what would be the captain's final voyage into the deep before hanging up his reel and retiring to a beach in Hawaii. What starts out for Drumm as a short escape from the mundane world of obits and ads for seaside condos quickly turns into a storm-tossed odyssey in which Mundus joyfully relives his seafaring days. The cantankerous and thoroughly entertaining captain treats Drumm and the reader to weird and wonderful stories about his ingenious fishing methods, his collection of charter 'idiots' and heroic first mates, and his lasting bitterness toward author Peter Benchley for never acknowledging him as the source of the Jaws story.Weaving his own extensive knowledge of the marine environment and the fishing industry with Mundus's peculiar blend of philosophy and seafaring lore, Drumm delivers a stunning portrait of a unique modern adventurer and a bleak, yet humorously portrayed, vision of the apocalypse.