Killer by Peter Tonkin

Title: Killer

Author: Peter Tonkin

Year: 1979

Publishing Details: First published Hodder and Stoughton Limited, Great Britain, Coronet Edition, 1980

Genre: Science Fiction, Horror

Topical Category: Sea Monster, Animals Attack!

Synopsis and Background:

It was persistently rumored during the Vietnam War, that the U.S. Navy, as part of a marine mammal training program, taught bottlenose dolphins how to apprehend and even kill Viet Cong operatives. While the U.S. military admits to training dolphins, sea lions, and beluga whales to do reconnaissance, find lost objects, and ‘tag’ trespassers, they maintain that dolphins have never been trained to kill humans. The training project lost some steam after the height of the Cold War, lost funding, became declassified, and the dolphins were retired.

Use of military marine mammals has continued however. The U.S. military is still funding dolphin research, while the Ukrainians and Russians have continued their training programs. You might remember Hvaldimir, the ‘Russian spy beluga’, who appeared in Norway in 2019 wearing a camera harness and behaving incredibly friendly to humans. Hvaldimir spent the rest of his life in and around highly populated areas, retrieving objects and interacting with humans, possibly to the detriment of his health. He died in 2024 of a mouth infection. But whatever his military service may or may not have been, it seems like human training and interaction caused Hvaldimir to become friendly and obedient towards humans.

But what if instead of playing fetch or begging for food, the whale had been trained…to kill?

So begins Killer by Peter Tonkin, at the Alternative Intelligence Marine Facility, in deep secrecy, an orca whale was taught to kill. Kidnapped from his pod as an infant and trained to be a living 40-ft. anti-personnel weapon, the killer whale accidentally ate, not an enemy combatant, but a clumsy admiral. 

Betrayed and shot at by the very humans he was taught by and trusted, he leapt the compound fence and escaped, bleeding, into the open sea. Learning to live in the wild, he took over a pod of orcas, found a mate, and led his new family on many successful hunts all the way up to the icy arctic sea. But there his memories stirred. His memories of training to kill men. 

Meanwhile, a plane full of scientists and arctic explorers crash into an ice floe in the frozen north. They include,

• Kate Warren, a post-graduate scientist studying the effects of cold on phytoplankton, who came to the arctic to try to prove herself as a scientist to her neglectful professor father
• Dr. Warren,  a narcissistic little man but brilliant scientist who was expecting a research assistant, not a daughter.
• Simon Quick, a camp director with a deep hatred towards
• Collin Ross, an arctic explorer extraordinaire and only survivor of a disastrous South Pole expedition that claimed the lives of all the members but himself, including Simon’s brother Robin and Jeremiah, brother of 
• Job, an Inuit, raised Methodist but still very aware of the old gods of his people and the sheer power of the arctic environment and the creatures who inhabit it, including the fierce and intelligent whales called ‘Sedna’s knucklebones’.

Stranded with their companions on the unforgiving ice, these humans must fight for survival against the elements, against each other, and against the killer whales.

SPOILERS BELOW

My Thoughts:

As I have said before, in my review of Orca by Arthur Herzog, the orca and its behavior and biology were little-known in the 1970s. So the continued lack of knowledge of the orcas’ matriarchal social structure, mating behavior, and habits can be forgiven. For example, killer whale females are NOT best characterized as ‘docile cows’.  And in contrast to Herzog, it is clear that Peter Tonkin did a serious amount of homework on killer whales, other marine mammals, Inuit mythology, and polar expeditions to put together a tidy thriller.

The characters are introduced in an effective manner that quickly clues us in to their personalities, backgrounds, and struggles before dumping them into a perilous survival situation made worse by the pod of killer whales hunting them. You can’t help but have an enormous amount of sympathy for Kate, ignored her whole life by her self-involved father and then ogled by Simon who is exactly the kind of manipulative weasel who adds a further element of danger to a dangerous situation. 

On top of that, Kate not only blames herself for the plane crash, almost gets blown up, is immediately assigned soup or coffee duty (presumably because she is female), and then almost gets eaten by a polar bear, but ALSO gets to be part of the only group of humans ever intentionally hunted by the forty-foot killer whale version of Wolverine on an unstable, shrinking arctic ice floe. 

I was happy to see Kate, though, because this marks the first appearance in my reading marathon of a Woman of Science since Kate Silverman, Curator of Anthropology (see Ritual by William Heffernan). Though it is sad that her expertise in phytoplankton didn’t really contribute to the plot or helping the protagonists survive. I do think that making her a whale biologist would have been too convenient. I am also glad she got to strike the final blow at the eponymous killer. He was tough, but she was just as determined to survive. And she did.

Overall Killer is a much more enjoyable novel than Orca and I am kinda surprised it was never made into a movie. Especially with how the titular whale and his pod come back for multiple scares like they’re slasher movie killers. And the potential novelty of having a ‘love triangle’ while trapped in a survival situation and hunted by an underwater monster. A bit similar to Creature from the Black Lagoon, actually.

The number of times during my reading marathon a pointless sex scene does nothing to advance the plot: Still 4

The number of times a lesbian character deserved better: Still 1

Rating:

3/3 Entertainment Value: This is a book I found hard to put down. The characters were constantly in peril and I was invested in discovering their fates. It was fun and I would re-read it.

3/3 Quality: This book was well written, kept track of all its plot threads, economically fleshed-out its characters before dumping them together, and had some very poetic descriptions of the Great White North.

1/3 Originality: The orca had already been used as the antagonist of the book and movie Orca: The Killer Whale, but the twist that the orca had been trained to be a US navy special guerilla operative was new and interesting. Again, reminding me of nothing so much as Wolverine and his Weapon X backstory (which was first published in 1991). I also liked the arctic setting, which was much longer and more interesting than the arctic parts of Orca.

0/1 Exceeds Expectations: The characters are pretty industry-standard. Especially Job the ‘Magical Native American’ and ‘Man Friday’, who is referred to throughout as an ‘Eskimo’. He is still portrayed sympathetically, don’t get me wrong, but he acts mostly as a source of ‘Eskimo’ exposition and as a loyal sidekick. And, as with similar ‘Magic sidekick’ characters in horror movies, he is slated for death from the get-go. Especially once he started talking about missing his wife and kids. The only thing missing was pulling a crayon drawing one of  his sons did out of his wallet. Poor Job. I did like Collin Ross’s presence as an arctic explorer with PTSD, a prosthetic arm, and a chip on his shoulder. Usually romantic leads are not described as ‘giant’ or constantly glower-y ‘his face was a wilderness’. 

Total Score: 7/10

Best Quote(s):

“He knew it would be there, waiting for its reward. And it was. Its flippers hooked over the edge of the cement as it held itself and waited expectantly, its huge black and white harlequin’s face at rest…he fired three shots at the killer. One missed. The second made a small wound high on its nose. The third opened a great gash from the corner of its mouth, behind its eye, up the side of its face. The killer screamed…”