When I decided to bring out my old Aristotle “Soc” Socarides series in digital, I wondered whether the books had survived the test of time. The human emotions that drive a story-greed, jealousy, envy, hatred-are timeless. But the Soc stories were told in a 1990s context, and the world has changed dramatically in the last couple of decades. So I was intrigued when I picked up The New York Times today and saw an article and a review on a controversial movie called “Blackfish.” The blackfish in this case is a six-ton bull orca named Tilikum. The movie focuses on the killer whale, who has been implicated in the deaths of three people, and the behind-the-scenes role of Sea World. The giant marine theme park is, understandably, not happy with the movie, and has launched an information campaign to counter the issues raised by the movie.

Tilikum and I are old friends, in a manner of speaking. I met him when I was writing Death in Deep Water, the third book in my detective series. In the book, the owners of a Cape Cod marine park hire Soc to investigate the death of a trainer possibly killed by an orca named Rocky. As I dug into my research, I learned that some people were criticizing the marine theme park industry for putting these highly intelligent predators under dangerous physical and mental stress by making them perform constantly in confined conditions. There had been several attacks on trainers, but these incidents had pretty much been covered up. My story was predicated on the fact that orcas liked humans. Attacks on people in the wild had been cases on mistaken identify. And even under the stressful conditions in a park pool, there had been no recorded cases of an orca killing its trainer.

In 1991, I read a story about Tilikum killing his trainer at a park in British Columbia. I made the adjustment in my manuscript, saying that this was the only known case of a fatal attack. Then in 1999 a man who had broken into the park was found dead in the orca pool. The evidence pointed at Tilikum. In 1910, he did it again, killing a senior trainer during a performance at the Marine World park in Orlando. Tilikum is still performing, and strict rules have been put in place to prevent another tragedy. You'll have to read the book to find out what happened with my fictional whale Rocky, but I was quite pleased with the way it turned out, and so, I think, was he.