Just 26 miles off the coast of San Francisco  are a set of islands very few people on the mainland know about.  These islands are more jutting teeth like rocks (which partly plays into the title)  than regular islands and are host to many different species of birds, sea lions and in the waters surrounding them great white sharks.  The islands are called the Farralon Islands and it is deemed a wildlife refuge by the California State Parks and Wildlife.  The public is not allowed on the Farralons without a permit and their only human residents are the scientists and biologists who study the birds and the sharks.

Susan Casey, a journalist who has written for Time and other publications, watches a BBC documentary about the great white sharks at the Farralon Islands and is immediately interested.  She gets in contact with the California Parks and Wildlife and is able to wrangle a guest permit to do a report on the islands.  When she arrives at the Farralons for the first time she meets Peter and Scott, two of the shark scientists stationed at the Farralons.  They were originally there to study birds but were able to talk the state into letting them study the great white sharks as well.  The Farralons are not easy to get on to.  You have to row up to the rocks in a small rowboat or whaler and get lifted on to the island using a crane and rubber raft-type harness.  Once on the island there is a house where the scientists stay and at the highest point a light house which is now automated.

Great white shark season in the Farralons is in the fall from September through November.  There are two types of great white sharks Casey describes in the book, the Sisters and the Rat Packers.  The Sisters are large females and can be the most aggressive in attacks.  The Rat Packers are the males.  In the several trips Casey went out to the Farralons she never did see a Sister, but she witnessed several attacks by Rat Packers.  Peter and Scott could put out a surfboard onto the water and see it immediately get attacked and bitten from below.  One would watch from the lighthouse and when a shark attack on a sea lion was discovered, he would radio to the other in the boat so he could observe and video tape.  The scientists kept a journal of all of the attacks in the house.  A shark attack could easily be spotted from on high because the sea gulls would flock together and the sea would turn red in the general area of the attack.

This was an utterly fascinating book.  Casey talks about the history of the Farralon Islands and the early settlers of San Francisco found out that eggs could be found on the Farralons. They would risk their lives scaling the rocks of the islands to steal eggs from the birds and then sell them in San Francisco since they didn’t bring chickens with them.  Casey also gives a brief history of the Monterey and San Diego aquariums trying to be the first to display a great white shark in their exhibits, but the sharks did not do well in confinement and ultimately had to be let go.  Having read other reviews of this book I did accidentally get a spoiler which I will not reveal here.  A lot of these reviews say that they liked the first part of the book and found it very interesting, but did not like Susan Casey as a person in the second half of the book. They believe she acted selfishly at the expense of others to get onto the islands.  I can see where they are coming from, but I found the whole book to be extremely interesting, well-written (and read as I listened to the audio book) and it made me do some Google image searches of the Farralons because I had never heard of these islands before.  I would highly recommend this book.

Rarely there is a case where the movie adaptation is better than the book.  This is how I felt about Up in the Air.  The movie was entertaining, funny and thought-provoking and George Clooney brought a lot to the role of Ryan Bingham.  Unfortunately, the book fell flat on all of those points for me.  I think I was most disappointed with how unfunny the book was compared with the movie. The book carries a more business-like tone.

Ryan Bingham is a frequent flyer who works for a company called ISM doing CTC, but he would rather work for a company called Myth Tech.  These acronyms are confusing and I kept having to go back to the page where they are first mentioned  to figure out what they mean.  CTC is Career Transition Counseling, in other words he helps companies lay off people.  ISM stands for Integrated Strategic Management.  Unlike the movie, Bingham’s job of firing people is rarely mentioned.  Towards the end of the book he meets a lady who he helped fire a long time ago in Dallas who remembers him well, while he has completely forgotten her.  Most of the book revolves around his frequent flying and a little bit about his sister getting married.  Even the movie treated that aspect of his personal life in a more fleshed out way.  This book goes on and on about meeting different business associates, flying and his loyalty to Great West airlines vs Desert Air, and hanging out in hotels.  Bingham is also working on a business novel called The Garage about an inventor who toils alone, but out in the real word people are taking his innovations and making a fortune.

I think my major problem with this book is that I’m not a business person and so as a result of that I was kind of bored by the whole thing.  I wasn’t bored enough to stop reading as I am on some books, but I was much more entertained by the movie than this book and  that is rare for me.  Generally the books are better than the movies.

This is one of those books that can be looked at from several different viewpoints. On one hand, this is the story of a single mother, pushed to the edge by circumstances beyond her control, who is desperately trying to protect her son from the situation. Another view is that this is the story about how much more difficult life can be for a parent of a child who has high-functioning autism. Overall though, this book is also a thriller that centers around an especially outrageous and tragic crime.

Danielle Parkman is a single mother, something that is never an easy thing to be. Her teenage son, Max, has been diagnosed with a form of high functioning autism, and this complicates everything. At the start of the book, Danielle is taking Max to see his psychologist, because she has become increasingly worried about some of Max’s behaviors.

He has become secretive, and moody, and a little bit violent, at times. There are signs that he might be suicidal. Max’s psychologist comes to the conclusion that Max really would benefit from being institutionalized at a place called Maitland, which is a top of the line psychiatric asylum. It seems that this is something that Danielle and the psychologist have discussed in the past, but the very idea still breaks Danielle’s heart.

Shortly after Max is admitted to Maitland, things begin to go wrong. The psychologists there feel that Max has many more problems than Danielle expected them to find. Max is having more frequent violent episodes. Danielle is getting pressured to return to work, after taking time off to deal with things. She is a lawyer, and has been working towards becoming a partner. However, her extensive time off has made her colleagues question if she was really should be made partner after all. If she loses her job, she won’t be able to pay for Maitland.

This is when tragedy strikes. Max is found unconscious, and covered with blood, in the room of another patient, who has obviously been murdered. Danielle believes he is innocent, and struggles to save Max from going to jail for a crime he did not commit. This isn’t easy, because all the evidence points right at Max. The rest of the book is one intense ride, as clues are discovered, cases are argued, and time ticks away. When you find out what really happened, you will be blown away. I certainly didn’t guess the ending, but once it was revealed, I was amazed at how well that all fit together.

What first got me interested in reading this book was that it had a character with high functioning autism. I have a sibling who has Asperger’s Syndrome, and was curious to see how well the author would describe a character who was like that. The author, van Heugten, has a child with autism, and I believe that her experience in real life led her to capture the essence of what it is like to know someone with high functioning autism. Max lacks some social skills, is very focused on computers, and also is extremely talented at using computers and the internet to gather information that he is interested in. That same description would fit my sibling quite well.

Another really cool thing about this author is that she was a former international lawyer. This is another area where the author’s real life experiences were used to enhance the book. The courtroom scenes felt extremely intense and believable, and both Danielle, and another lawyer who helps her, seem to know an immense amount about law, how court cases work, and what it takes to get evidence admitted into a case.

I really enjoyed this book, but there were some parts where I felt the need to suspend my disbelief in order to keep the story from falling apart. Danielle takes several risks in her efforts to get Max out of Maitland that could get her into legal trouble. Would a desperate mother take those risks? Perhaps. Would a mother who was also a lawyer, and “knew better”, take those risks? Well… maybe so. However, Danielle takes even bigger and bigger risks as the story continues. While this makes for an exciting storyline, part of me was questioning if someone as knowledgeable as Danielle was about the legal implications of her actions would still choose to do those things. I also wondered where Max’s father was, exactly, and why wasn’t he at least providing child support? How can a single mother find the time to raise a child with special needs and become a lawyer who is about to make partner? These things confused me. However, when I got to the part where the killer is revealed, I set all my questioning thoughts aside, because I was so impressed with how well that fit. It’s one of those moments where you learn the answer and think, “Of course!”, and then wonder why you didn’t see that coming.