Rip Tide

by Donald D. Cheatham

The bathers, sun-worshipers, and vacationers were all too busy to notice the twenty-six foot shadow and the sinister gray fin that lurked in the warm shore waters in search of prey

Genres: Horror

318 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1984

Reviews

[Nick Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best B-book ever written. (Recently republished by Fathom Press)
Our hero in Riptide, and I use that term in the loosest possible sense, has a backstory that sounds like it would have been an action-packed crime thriller best seller. Michael Stark was a St Louis cop who took on a sniper serial killer in a long and drawn-out manhunt. The killer was someone from his past who was now massacring innocent people in St. Louis for a wrong he believes Stark did to him. The sniper’s body count is hilarious and gives you a little taste into what is to come; pregnant women, children Etc. Stark has a downtown shootout with him near a floating McDonald's on the river. St Louis people…did you really have a floating McDonald’s in the early 80s?? Tons of innocent bystanders get killed. It reminds me of the movie Demolition Man. The case and publicity ruin his life, so he leaves his family and moves to Florida to take this easy job as a detective in the small beachfront town of Surfside.

So basically, Riptide is the after-story of the tough as nails cop who went one-man-army against a psycho killer who is now taking it sleazy in big titty bikini land, sort of battling a giant tiger shark and surviving a devastating hurricane.

A huge part of what makes Riptide so fun is you never where it’s going. There are so many avenues this goes down that will make you literally say, “wait, what?” out loud.

The basic set up is- ex St Louis-super cop gets new position in beach town, meets a plethora of smoking hot to trot ladies that he must navigate through, he has to catch a rapist on the nude beach, and there is a giant tiger shark eating people but in the end it doesn’t matter because a catastrophic hurricane is about to kill ninety thousand people. And we’re there for all of it. Crime, horror, sleaze and disaster novel all rolled into one.
Right away we get our first shark kill. A man sitting on the edge of a dock, completely out of the water is attacked when a rushing explosion of sharp-teeth shark-mouth chomps down on his leg and drags him in; a gurgling scream reaches no one’s ears from under the surface of the water.

Our hero Stark shows up at his new Surfside precinct. Yes, our hero’s name is one letter off from the word shark in a book about a killer shark. Stark is taken aback that not only is his superior Liza Sallings a woman, but she is also incredibly hot. You are probably wondering about her bra size. Well don’t worry because Cheatham lets us know it’s a 36D. These first two chapters are the perfect introduction to this book. Here is what’s on the menu, insane shark attacks and porn stars playing the roles of professional career women and neither ever lets up.

Let’s take a quick look at a small sampling of the insanity:

A shark chomping off a person’s head

A bus full of the elderly drowned

Hurricane winds blowing people’s skin right off their bodies

A guy riding a shark

A hurricane orgy with a death count

Undercover at the nude beach

Shark-Stark staring contest

Fires, floods, tan lines, no tan lines, hammerheads, hangovers, legs, pubes, killer pebbles, orgies, guns, tiger sharks, Jaws references, snakes, boobs, police work, bikinis, mothers and children eaten by sharks, incest twins eaten by sharks, cheating wives eaten by sharks, tourists eaten by sharks who are then immediately eaten by a bigger shark, and surprisingly lots of factual information on the ocean, sharks and hurricanes.

[Anna Keaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind you, I read this as a teenager, but I loved it.

[Mark-on-Storygraph · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deliciously terrible Jaws knockoff. I read it for a book report in 6th grade.

[La Nécropolivre · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book came from a parallel universe where Tommy Wiseau would have directed Jaws.

[Echo Bennett · Rating 3 out of 5]

A giant tiger shark is ravaging the the town of Surfside. There is blood in the water, lots and lots of blood and body parts because this shark has an insatiable appetite.

For a shark book, I loved it, the attacks were chomping good … I wish the author would have maintained his focus on that instead of going off on a tangent at the end forgetting about poor Mr. Sharkie.

Keep in mind, this book was written in the 80’s so you are going to have a little mysogeny in there along with some horny people. Good grief. Everyone had sex on the brain and the main character wanted to bang any and all of the women he came across.

But, all that aside, if you love sharks, read this book and ignore all the other stuff.

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ho hum. That pretty much defines this book. In broad strokes: the first two-thirds are a standard shark story, nothing overwhelming or underwhelming. The characters are shallow and may be defined by a single characteristic, like the man-whore or the wanna-be tough female cop. You don't really care about any of them. The last third of this book becomes a disaster story. A vicious hurricane hits the island and the island survives, lots of folks die - a disaster. After the disaster? The last paragraph of the book is that same shark from the first two-thirds of the book. So, what was the point? Don't even bother ending it? Like I said... Ho hum.

[DVDBoxSet]

So unhinged and unintentionally hilarious, male fantasy that becomes a parody of itself when it just keeps escalating and escalating and then a shark leaps 50 ft in the air and eats it

There's a sequence in this where the chief of police makes his 3 detectives go undercover on a nude beach and is adamant that all three of them get completely naked and be horny and then a shark leaps 50 ft in the air

[Egghead · Rating 5 out of 5]

if bruno mattei
wrote a book while chugging wine
it would be rip tide