Showing results by author "Michael Capuzzo" in All Categories

The summer of 1916 was brutally hot, driving thousands to the Jersey Shore to indulge in the newfangled activity of swimming in the ocean, and a good swimmer could strut his stuff in front of an appreciative audience. But happiness turned to horror as a killer invaded this idyllic scene - with never a warning and showing no mercy to its victims.

Good friends and sometime rivals William Fleisher, Frank Bender, and Richard Walter—a renowned FBI agent turned private eye, a sculptor lothario who speaks to the dead, and an eccentric profiler known as “the living Sherlock Holmes”—were heartsick over the growing tide of unsolved murders of innocents. They decided one day over lunch that something had to be done, and pledged themselves to a grand quest for justice.

Combining rich historical detail and a harrowing, pulse-pounding narrative, Close to Shore brilliantly re-creates the summer of 1916, when a rogue Great White shark attacked swimmers along the New Jersey shore, triggering mass hysteria and launching the most extensive shark hunt in history.