Thresher by Michael Cole
Thresher by Michael Cole
I’ve been a fan of shark stories since I first read Call It Courage by Armstrong Sperry when I was still in elementary school. Now Peter Benchley’s Jaws stands as the benchmark against which all such stories are measured and Michael Cole’s Thresher holds up pretty well in this company. At its heart, it’s a story of a rogue fish terrorizing a community. It also has a law enforcement officer with a serious problem (not fear of the water this time, but an inability to come to grips with his wife’s death), shady politicians, and a couple of very likeable other characters—enough to make it quite probable that some of these people are going to get eaten by the titular shark.
The buildup is good. The shark is a terrible danger right from the beginning, coming off a little more like a megalodon than a great white, but this gets explained about midway through the story. In fact, in those early chapters, a lot more author energy is expended building up the cast than it is on the fish that attracted all the readers.
About midway through the novel, we find out that we are actually reading science fiction. The thresher, and what a great shark to build this story on because it hunts and fights very differently than a great white does, has consumed some experimental growth hormones that has radically boosted its size. The hormone has the additional effect of making the animal very aggressive. And since the government was involved in testing the growth hormone, a certain powerful politician wishes to cover up that his experiment has resulted in the deaths of a lot of people. So in addition to worrying about a man-eating predator wrecking boats in the nearby ocean, the heroes also have to fight a government coverup that is preventing news of the true extent of the danger to get out.
Now this is where the one seriously wrong turn that the author makes factors into the story. The heroes kill and capture a second fish that has been infected by the growth hormone—so they have evidence they can use to actually prove what is happening—but the scientist who made the discovery decides to use the dead fish as bait for the giant thresher. I hope I don’t have to dwell on how stupid this is. Not only does it dispose of badly needed evidence, every reader will instantly realize it puts some of the nicer characters in the story in serious risk.
That being said, the hunt for the shark and the climatic ending gave me all the thrills and excitement and satisfaction that I could have hoped for in this novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
