His elder son, Peter Benchley (1940-2006), was a writer best known for writing the novel Jaws and the screenplay of the 1975 Steven Spielberg film made from it.

During successive summers in the 1980's, thrill seekers in the beach-front city packed showings of shark movies based on the novel "Jaws."

Charges Rocked the Town When the charges were brought, they stunned this conservative town, where the novel "Jaws" was banned from the school library in the 1970's because it included curse words.

It is based on the novel Jaws by Peter Benchley.

The attacks inspired Peter Benchley's novel Jaws (1974), an account of a great white shark that torments the fictional coastal community of Amity.

It is based on a true-life series of shark attacks that became the inspiration for Peter Benchley's novel Jaws.

Peter Benchley, who drew from the names of local streets and roads in creating the fictional town of Amity in his 1974 novel Jaws.

The bestselling novel Jaws by Peter Benchley and the subsequent blockbuster film by Steven Spielberg depicted the great white shark as a "ferocious man eater".

Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, producers at Universal Pictures, independently heard about Peter Benchley's novel Jaws.

One or several bull sharks may have been responsible for the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916, which was the inspiration for Peter Benchley's novel Jaws.