Killer

Начало книги

As in many of the greatest works of literature, nothing expresses the precariousness of man’s place in the universe more than an assault by 200 fear-maddened, stampeding walruses. Peter Tonkin’s Killer delivers that battle royale, plus arm-eating killer whales, rampaging polar bears, and dynamite-hurling marine biologists in a breathless blast. Killer may be many things, but it is most definitely not screwing around. It’s pulp, but it plays for keeps.

It’s also the only killer whale book on the market, unless you count Orca, Arthur Herzog’s 1977 novelization of Dino De Laurentiis’s motion picture of the same name, starring Richard Harris, Charlotte Rampling, and Bo Derek getting her leg bitten off. This means that Killer stands alone. But it’s not merely its singularity that distinguishes Tonkin’s book. A hurtling, out-of-control man-vs.-nature roller coaster, it starts with a plane crash in chapter one and refuses to ease up on the throttle until the last arm is eaten. Like Jaws, it’s a book that doesn’t have higher aspirations than delivering a rollicking rush of high adventure marine mayhem, but it delivers those goods so efficiently and effectively that it transcends its limitations and becomes pop art.

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