Stingray : The Lethal Tactics of the Sole Survivor (Paperback)

~ Peter Lance (Author) "The stingray, known in marine biology as a torpedinoform, is a member of the shark family of elasmobranchii..." (more)
Key Phrases: merged tribe, reef master, tree mail, Richard Hatch, Mark Burnett, Tribal Council (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Seventy-one million Americans watched Richard Hatch win $1 million on the Survivor television series during the summer of 2000. He was the brilliant strategist and ruthless manipulator that viewers loved to hate. Then Hatch's $500,000 book deal to spill the inside secrets of his Survivor strategies and his life story got throttled by CBS. Trampled in the scuffle was Hatch's cowriter, five-time Emmy-winning investigative journalist Peter Lance. Hatch had led him to believe that CBS permission was in the bag, and Lance had already spent months working on the book when the deal died. So Lance went ahead and wrote his own book, full of those delectably greasy little details that Survivor fans hunger for, and including his own first-person observations. He provides a day-by-day commentary on the series, exposes several sides of Richard Hatch that we didn't see, and offers disturbing evidence that CBS manipulated events and people.

Lance knew "Dickie" Hatch as a child and is compassionate when detailing his early life. Hatch was an overweight, lonely child, wearing Coke-bottle thick glasses, sexually victimized by bullies before age 10, smoking pot and cigarettes by sixth grade, and becoming a "serious drinker" as an adult. (Hatch no longer drinks or smokes.) The Stingray does not flatter the present-day Richard Hatch, however, calling him "villainous" and a liar (off the series as well as on). Lance quotes a management consultant describing Hatch as "a wild animal who went to school." "King Richard" was brilliant at winning the throne through "guile, deceit and the strength of his will," says Lance, but "he behaved like a hick on a Starline Hollywood Tour when it came to using his fame as a launching pad for the rest of his life."

Lance reveals CBS's stranglehold on the castaways' ability to earn money post-Survivor by gatekeeping every offer and rejecting all that competed with CBS programming or sponsors. He offers unsettling substantiation that CBS distorted events, shifted the sequence of scenes, and may have tainted the voting. The book's organization seems hasty and haphazard at times, with topics frequently raised in one chapter and revisited in another. But if you're a Survivor devotee, this is a must-read. The title refers to the way Hatch compared his skewering stingrays for food to his treatment of the other castaways: "Stab. Blood in the water. Bye bye baby." --Joan Price

Review

...a blistering, unauthorized, inside story about the life of Richard Hatch, a play by play account of his tactics... -- Rudyreigns, Survivor Website

A tell-all, giving the inside story of [Richard] Hatch's Machivellian strategy ... a guide to potential pitfalls for aspiring reality-show contestants. -- P.J. Mark, Inside

Emmy-winning former ABC journalist and novelist Peter Lance takes a cold, hard look at reality television programming... -- Wm. J. Birnes, Bestselling author of THE DAY AFTER ROSWELL

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Cinema 21 Books (December 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1885840039
• ISBN-13: 978-1885840035
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,594,283 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Richard's Revenge, January 3, 2003

By	sweetmolly (RICHMOND, VA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

To read this sort of stuff, you really have to be a "Survivor" junkie, and I qualify. I have been with it since the start and don't believe I have missed an episode (though some were eminently missable!).

"The Stingray" came out hoping to capitalize on first "Survivor" winner Richard Hatch's instant fame. The author's big beef is 1) CBS has Survivor cast members so locked up, it's a wonder they can even renew their drivers' license and 2) Richard Hatch "strung him along" and a $500,000 book deal sunk from sight because Richard either was unaware of the lock CBS had on him or thought he could get around it.

Mr. Lance never considers that maybe Richard Hatch was also bummed out about losing $500,000. The book is basically one long whine. Lance constantly reminds us he is a multiple award winning "investigative journalist" and Hatch is well---chopped liver. Richard is a fascinating subject, a man that has reinvented himself more times than you can count, very bright, self-destructive, and some of this information is presented.

Awards aside, this book is atrociously edited and hardly a page goes by without major typos and misspellings. The organization is non-existent. Mr. Lance is much given to "More on THIS later" type statements, only there never is any "more." The author constantly zings Hatch with "you knew how to win a million dollars; but you didn't know what to do after you got it."

Well, now it is two years later. Richard seems to be doing ok, and he has been resurrected as the Prime Survivor. All other Survivors are compared to Richard and found lacking. Latest Survivor winner Brian Haydik, who could probably give a whole new meaning to the phrase "coldly ambitious", is believed to have modeled his strategy on Hatch's game. At the time of Richard's win, he was the man you loved to hate, and Peter Lance sneered that would be his undoing. Not necessarily so. Viewers gradually realized you could be Charley-nice-guy and get booted off the island, or you could Outwit, Outplay, and Out Mean everyone else and come home with a million dollars.

Many of the interviews in this book are second-hand, even at the time the book was printed. I gave the book a second star for the occasional insights into Hatch's character. Otherwise, a waste of time.
-sweetmolly-Amazon Reviewer

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Best Survivor Book Yet, January 8, 2001

By	M. Myers "mmyers" (Palo Alto, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a fascinating book for anyone interested in the Survivor TV show. It outshines the other two available books about the show, Mark Burnett's canned Survivor and Rich Hatch's threadbare and disappointing 101 Survival Secrets. Of the three, The Stingray is the only one to offer truly objective commentary on the show and to analyze how and why the contestants did what they did both on and off screen.

Lance, originally chosen to help write survivor Rich Hatch's book, brings to light some important facts that the two more sanitized books obviously would never touch. He explores, for instance, CBS' possible violations of FCC rules in influencing the outcome of what purported to be contestant votes. He seems to have a firm grasp on Hatch's personality (a better grasp than Hatch himself, in fact, if Hatch's book is any indication) and skillfully analyzes Hatch's strategy and choices both during and after the game.

More interestingly, Lance analyzes the larger game - that is, the race for fame and fortune off-screen. CBS is the clear winner here, but Lance also adroitly points out both victories and missteps by the contestants after the game ended. He is particularly good at analyzing where Hatch blundered and why a "losing" contestant like Colleen Haskell is likely to profit more in the long run than Hatch, the official million-dollar winner. His Ten Tactics for winning at Survivor are on-target, but his Ten Lessons for Translating Victory into Longterm Success are positively inspired. Example: "It isn't enough to win the game. The public must celebrate your victory."

Lance went wrong in a few important ways, though. First, this book could also use a good proofreading. And while Lance's research in the most interesting areas appears to be solid, he seems to have run out of steam when it came to tying up loose ends (such as whether CBS really did influence the votes). Where he has no good evidence to offer, he strays into conspiracy theory and in place of analysis simply asks one rhetorical question after another: "Why would Dirk have brought it up to Stacey if it didn't happen? Why would Stacey...?" More than one section plays out in this unsatisfying fashion.

The great drawings by Zeebarf (who did the cover illustration) add a lot to the book's appeal. While a good editor could have made this book into something more satisfying, it's still a quick and lively read. Anyone interested in the show would find this book hard to put down.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Very poorly written; editing nonexistent, May 16, 2001

By	Book Queen (Valdese, NC USA) - See all my reviews

It is hard to judge the merits of a book in which typographical errors abound on each page. Worse, the author doesn't know the difference between "elude" and "allude", nor "effect" and "affect." His punctuation is bizarre. Sentence fragments abound.

Clearly, this book was rushed to press to capitalize on Survivor's current popularity.

If you are looking for new information on Survivor, or facts and the life history of Richard Hatch, look elsewhere. Throughout the book, the author repeatedly says "more on that later" or "we'll get to that soon" -- yet never does.

I'm glad I borrowed this book from a friend and didn't pay my own cold hard cash for it.