Summer book club: JAWS by Peter Benchley

Jaws is a novel by American writer Peter Benchley, published by Doubleday in 1974. It tells the story of a large great white shark that preys upon a small Long Island resort town and the three men who attempt to kill it.

The novel grew out of Benchley's interest in shark attacks after he read about the exploits of Frank Mundus, a shark fisherman from Montauk, New York, in 1964. Doubleday commissioned Benchley to write the novel in 1971, a period when the writer worked as a freelance journalist.