From the author of Jaws. Two men and a boy, on the boat they charter to game-fishermen, are lazing away the hottest hours of a Caribbean day when they notice a cameo which appears to be adrift. They manoeuvre it alongside their boat, one of the men reaches to pull back the tarpaulin which conceals whatever it containsand the reader receives a jolting shock which reminds him of those famous first pages of Jaws. Thus starts one of the many mysterious marine incidents which, over the years, have been explained this way or that, and which in one small area of the Caribbean have given rise to a terrified silence. New York journalist Blair Maynard is intrigued by the variety of the explanations, but it is not until he reaches the place where silence reigns, and can see the silhouette of the island at its centre, that he begins to suspect that he is on to something truly extraordinary. He lands on that islandthe strangest island in all the West Indies, indeed in the modern world; and the