The film was made without a finished script, a practice not often used now but then it was only one of the many many things they did while filming this - the book being written later, one was given to understand from what the program about the famous film said. Perhaps first of its kind in that it was likely to be all too real a scenario unlike the until then famous King Kong or later Godzilla and Jurassic Park - although the later two could happen, given human stupidity - this was terror not known before re non human species.
A shark happens to enter a channel of water closer to human habitation, that at US east coast at summer when people at the beach is the rule and any hint of the danger might produce not only panic but loss of tourism which is huge source of income, while on the other hand there is the danger to human lives, and one needs to be certain of what is causing the mysterious happenings but not delay then any measures to prevent human lives from being endangered - in short that is the dilemma faced by a town's authorities as the shark makes short work of one human here, another there.
High point of reading it was when young people in a boat need rescue but the helicopter with its noise brings the shark. Comparatively the film with its shark accorded human or more qualities of intelligence, planning, vendetta or malevolence was unreal, in that for a shark a human is merely possible food amongst many other choices in the ocean, nothing more and nothing less.
One is bound to recall various seafaring tales and legends of yore from ancient times, and wonder which in fact did refer to real species like sharks.
