Driven offshore by too many obituaries, a newspaper reporter takes a five-day fishing trip aboard the charter fishing boat Cricket II with Captain Frank Mundus, the godfather of Jaws.

What begins as a short escape for author Russell Drumm quickly turns into a storm-tossed odyssey in which Mundus, on the eve of his retirement, relives his 40 years at sea. He recollects his ingenious methods, his weird collection of charter "Idiots," and his lasting bitterness toward Peter Benchley for never acknowledging him as the source of the Jaws story. In the Slick of the Cricket is the richer truth behind that fiction, "I hate fiction," Mundus warns the author at the start of the trip.