The Deepis Peter Benchley’s second novel, published as a hardcover by Doubleday in 1976. The Bantam paperback, published a year later, is the edition that caught my eye. A tie-in to the film, the cover art is reminiscent of the movie poster, but very much original to the book. A female scuba diver stretching towards the water’s surface where a boat awaits. Below, what appears to be the ribbing of a sunken ship. The artist: Unknown (to me, at least).
The opening paragraph:
“It was ten o’clock in the morning when the captain noticed that the wind had begun to die.”
The Deep, following the success of the film of Benchley’s novel Jaws, was filmed almost immediately by director Peter Yates with a screenplay by Peter Benchley and Tracy Keenan Wynn. Nick Nolte, Jacqueline Bisset and the reliable Robert Shaw were the major on screen players.
