WL Rating
With one of the best opening sentences I’ve read in a long time: “The killing took place at dawn and as usual it was a decapitation, accomplished by a single vicious swipe,” The Devil’s Teeth is a well-written summary of Susan Casey’s exploits in the Farallon Islands. Located in Northern California’s Red Triangle, the ocean’s richest concentration of great white sharks, the Farallones are a collection of jagged, nasty islands teeming with some of the world’s richest marine life. Casey admittedly becomes completely obsessed with the islands, the sharks, and even their handsome (her words, not mine) biologist caretakers. Ultimately, her obsession leads to dangerous, not to mention expensive, mishaps. There are quite a few good bits in the book, and Casey has a gift for sharp, witty observations that serve to lighten the oppressive weight of life in the Farallones. One of the more interesting characters is Ron, the islands’ sole surviving urchin diver, who regularly braves the cold, sharky waters in order to deliver expensive urchin gonads to hungry Japanese. While I occasionally found myself skimming some of the book’s extraneous details, more often than not I simply enjoyed learning more about the sharks that share the ocean with me here in San Francisco. (October 2008)
