Close to Shore by Michael Capuzzo, Mike Capuzzo

ironically, the first to suffer from damage to the ecosystem, the most likely to go extinct. It was the cost of scarcity: For the ecosystem to remain in balance, the great white must forever skirt extinction.
    The great fish's environment had not just diminished, it had disappeared. Perhaps it was attacked and injured by a larger predator. What motivated it is unknown. What is known is that it became a rare “rogue” member of its species—a deranged individual apex predator, a behavior seen in man-killing lions and elephants in Africa. And in human beings. “It was the equivalent,” says George Burgess, “of a serial killer.” At the dawn of the twentieth century, this comparison was not yet available, as human serial killers were not known. In the parlance of the time, it was a sea monster.
    Soon other currents and scents, like the ones that had snatched it into the giant stream, began to work on the young shark, pulling it west. Prey was still scarce, its hunger growing, but the water was getting shallower, and all its senses told it that this at least was a good thing. It was nearing shore and its more abundant prey.
    It was sometime in late June when an especially powerful and new scent began to flow from the coastal streams of New Jersey into the sea. The shark picked up the scent and decided to investigate. If the scent was foreign—the shark may never have encountered human beings—it would have induced caution along with interest. In all encounters it was governed by a rule born inside it: Never start a fight you can't win. In such moments, the shark did not rise much above its customary sluggish pace, reserving all energy for the moment of attack.

Paradise
    T railing a pennant of thick black coal smoke, the Beach Haven Express steamed toward the glittering sky, the freshening breeze. Five miles from the coast, over the Manahawkin meadows, Charles and his sisters were forced to shut the windows as mosquitoes, gnats, and greenhead flies swarmed the car. The Pullman grew suffocatingly hot.
    Straight ahead, set against the horizon and the sea, defining the center of human presence, stood the tall, conical spire of the Engleside Hotel. The great wooden arc had weathered forty years of hurricanes and storms that had ruined many islanders; it was said misfortune never met the Engle family. Just south
of the Engleside was Reuben Tucker's community of Tucker's Beach, once America's fashionable first sea resort, now in the course of becoming a ghost town and being consumed by the ocean. In a few years a gale would blast Tucker's Beach clean off the tip of Long Beach Island, creating Tucker's Island, whereupon the waves would complete the process of slowly engulfing two hotels, post office, school, lighthouse, Coast Guard installation, and eighteen homes, until not even the birds had a place to stand.
    The Pennsylvania Railroad's Beach Haven station rose nobly from the quagmire like the colonial seat of a distant
new territory—a small Queen Anne hymn of dormers and shuttered windows overlooking awesome stretches of sea grass and swamp. A porter from the Engleside rushed forward to hoist suitcases and steamer trunks onto the island's first motorized vehicle, an extended Model-T with a green canopy and ENGLESIDE AUTOBUS stenciled on the door. As Charles disembarked, he posed for a photograph he no doubt planned to treasure as a keepsake. In the photograph he is wearing a black double-breasted suit and boater hat and standing proudly next to the giant black Pennsylvania steam engine, his eyes bright with summertime joy. He is carrying a suitcase in each hand for a long and leisurely stay.
    Seeing his son, tall now and filling out, standing by the railroad engine, pleased Dr. Vansant, for the boy was at last coming into his own. After the dandyism of his early years, the male camaraderie and roughhousing he enjoyed in college had hardened him. Charlie, or “Van,” as his Penn friends called him, had thrown himself,