Great white shark all shark species, the great white shark is responsible for by far the largest number of recorded shark bite incidents on humans, with 272 documented unprovoked bite incidents on humans as of 2012. More than any documented bite incident, Peter Benchley's best-selling novel "Jaws" and the subsequent 1975 film adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg provided the great white shark with the image of being a "man eater" in the public mind. While great white sharks have killed humans in at least 74 documented unprovoked bite incidents, they typically do not target them: for example, in the Mediterranean Sea there have
Jaws (novel) plot. It's boring, pointless, listless; if there's a trite turn to make, "Jaws" will make that turn." An article in "The Listener" criticized the plot, stating the "novel only has bite, so to say, at feed time," and these scenes are "naïve attempts at whipping along a flagging story-line." Andrew Bergman of "The New York Times Book Review" felt that despite the book serving as "fluid entertainment", "passages of hollow portentousness creep in" while poor scene "connections [and] stark manipulations impair the narrative." Nevertheless, some reviewers found "Jaws"'s description of the shark attacks entertaining. John Spurling of the "New Statesman"