Customer Reviews

In the Slick of the Cricket: The True Story behind the Jaws Epic

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I loved this book. You don't find a lot of books about Sharkin around. I swear that I could almost taste the salt air of the Atlantic Ocean while reading this. Hats off to the author and thanks for the wonderful bio of Frank Mundus.

Capt. Mundis hunt for the great white sharks off Montauk,NY is an expose of human foibles. The very people he took fishing,turn around and become a part of the feeding frenzy of exploitation of the oceans. Russel Drumm,the author,writes of subjects he knows intimately. The prose flows with the ebb and fall of the tides. This is a book of the sea by men of the sea.

Just when you thought it was safe to ..... read a book... "Cricket" offers an insight to the man that inspired the role of "Quint" in the movie "Jaws".

Frank Mundus is a unique character...honest, poetic, funny, intelligent, old school. Too bad there are not more fisherman like him....

I give it 4 fins.

Whatever preconceived notions you hold about this wonderful book, be prepared to push your personal horizons farther than even the great Frank Mundus might care to go. Drumm is a find. He writes about shark fishing in a way that makes it a metaphor for much greater things. That's not meant to take away from the fact that this book is first and foremost about the "Monster Man's" greatest accomplishments. It is very much what you might expect. But it is also a fresh and original exploration into the personal and collective oceans within us all. Read it to recover a sense of awe.

Frank Mundus may have been the role model for Peter Benchley's Quint, but he was much more than that. Quint was an egotist whose hubris endangered those aboard the Orca and cost him his life and his shark. Frank Mundus would never play fast and loose with his passengers -- and if he went out after a shark, he'd damn well come home with the shark. Whether taking some rich paying customer out to chase down giant sailfish or going out with some pals to fill up the freezer with dinner, the man was a walking, talking fish finder.

Many (many, many) years ago, my dad and uncles got to know Mundus and, once or twice a year, they'd go out fishing. No charters, just some pals out for a day away from the wives...and if they made it past the Anchor Inn, about a mile from our dock, it would have surprised the hell out of all of them. Mundus wasn't famout yet. He was pretty young at the time, and my dad referred to him as "the kid" or "the Dutchman." Whatever his age, Mundus was already a fishing phenomenon.

In the book, Frank Mundus comes across as a loud braggart, full of semi-funny stories about shark-related pranks, including balancing himself on the carcass of a dead whale, carving off chunks of the creature and tossing them to the surrounding sharks...as if they were a pack of beagle puppies jumping for milk bones, and sacrificing a goat to impress the paying customers. Did I mention that Mundus had quite a reputation as a leg puller?

The Slick of the Cricket creates a hagiography and mythos around Mundus, and tracks a week-long shark hunting expedition during which the writer really struggles to uncover the inner enigma of Mundus. Better he should have stuck to fishing. Mundus was an ordinary guy who could catch fish and spin yarns like nobody's business. He knew the Long Island Sound, it's mysteries and currents and secret sweet spots. He knew when to try to outrun a storm or sit her out. And he knew where the big fish lived, when they were hungry and what they wanted to eat. A fish whisperer, if you will.

It wasn't magic or voodoo (despite the dubious goat sacrifice). It was experience, instinct and a very sharp brain at work. Exploring that would have made this a great read. How did Mundus know where the great whites might be? There aren't a lot of them, but if one was in the vicinity, Mundus would find him.

Same thing with the blues...my dad said The Dutchman could smell when the bluefish were running. He'd drop by and they'd pile into one of the family's leaky rowboats, gun the reluctant outboard and head out to where the bluefish were feeding. Fast, mean and delicious, the bluefish would come in droves after a school of small fry, snapping those sharp teeth as they took bites right and left...and so thick in the water you didn't need a fishing pole... you just tossed the bailing bucket over the side and scooped 'em up. The trick was not falling overboard, especially after a couple of beers. A hungry bluefish is voracious...think of an 11-pound piranha.

What Mundus knew must have been fascinating, and while I haven't had a fishing pole in my hands in a couple of decades, God what I'd give know some of his real secrets...was he reading the water, the way it looked, the surface flow, the color? What did he see that nobody else did? Russell Drumm has a good book here, but it would be better had he just shut up and fished instead of looking for the metaphysical meaning of it all.

The laughter, the bellowed-out stories, the cries of "didja see how he..." emanating from the picnic table out back where my dad, Mundus (Uncle Dutchman to us kids) and the uncles sat scaling and cleaning their catch were the real deal...hard working men having a little bit of fun when they could. Come Monday, they'd be back in the factory, back driving the truck, back hauling tourists up and down the Sound.

Maybe Mundus did sacrifice the odd goat to impress (and scare the tar out of) some moneybags dentist from Scarsdale. But he knew he was kidding and Mr. Drumm doesn't seem to. I think he might have understood Mundus'character better had he approached the man with a sixpack of Schaeffer and some still warm home-made kielbasa sandwiches.

If you aren't much of a fisherman, you may enjoy this book more. It just doesn't give enough of the Mundus kavorka -- his innate fish sense, how to track and catch the really big ones (even before there was sonar and loran), what it's like at 5:00 a.m. when the air has a knife edge to it, the water is steel grey and unforgiving, and you have something bigger than your car attached to your line. Drumm doesn't give us what it feels like going out in the dark to hunt down some dinner at the end of a hook, or to prove yourself against a 300 lb psychopath with a couple of hundred razor sharp knives in its jaw. That's what Mundus was all about, and what the book just misses. It gets the joke, but it doesn't get the man.

Taking place along the shores and outer reaches of Long Island, NY, Russell Drumm smartly lets the sea stories of Frank Mundus, purported to be Benchley's model for the shark hunter Quint,be the center of this short book. Joining Mundus on one of his last trips out before retirement, Drumm let's Mundus' voice do most of the talking and a fine story teller Mundus turns out to be. When sticking with Mundus and the journey at hand, the book is successful, but when Drumm explores the metaphysical with his take on the nature of fishing and the spiritual presence of a deck hand that committed suicide; the book veers off into places that just waste time and don't further the narrative. Read it for Mundus, and make your way through the rest.

This is an interesting story from an author trying too hard. The previous reviewer was spot on. Wade through the metaphysics and introspection and you'll find the stories about the fishing and the fishing people interesting.

Russell Drumm's In the Slick of the Cricket, is an introductory course to the legendary shark fisherman, Frank Mundus. Fishing in the waters near Montauk, Mundus is well known for bringing in record-breaking White sharks. According to Mundus, his straightforwardness and skillfulness in shark fishing inspired Peter Benchley to create the character Quint, in his most frightening and notorious novel-JAWS. We are given this information as well as several other humorous experiences as Drumm sails on what could very well be Mundus' last expedition on his indestructible ship, the Cricket II. I felt that the plot had the potential of becoming something much larger than what it actually is. Several of Mundus' experiences are thought provoking such as humankind's massive crave for the exploitation and genocide of all shark species after the film JAWS hit the movie screens. However, Drumm's writing style was often ambiguous; jumping from Mundus' stories to his present expedition without smooth transitions is confusing and mis-leading. Obviously, fishing jargon is commonly used and difficult to follow at times, but Drumm does a decent job in identifying and defining the terms through both his and Mundus' stories. Also, most of the chapters end with philosophical ranting about Drumm's personal views on a variety of the substance dealt with in the book, but the connections between his thoughts and Mundus' words were poor. If you're interested in fishing excursions and the exploitation of sharks, this book may be of interest to you. Either way, I recommend that the reader remains focused to follow the sketchy transitions between Robert Drumm and Frank Mundus.

Taking place along the shores and outer reaches of Long Island, NY, Russell Drumm smartly lets the sea stories of Frank Mundus, purported to be Benchley's model for the shark hunter Quint,be the center of this short book. Joining Mundus on one of his last trips out before retirement, Drumm let's Mundus' voice do most of the talking and a fine story teller Mundus turns out to be. When sticking with Mundus and the journey at hand, the book is successful, but when Drumm explores the metaphysical with his take on the nature of fishing and the spiritual presence of a deck hand that committed suicide; the book veers off into places that just waste time and don't further the narrative. Read it for Mundus, and make your way through the rest.