At the close of World War II, Nazi scientist Ernst Kruger perfects a biological weapon he calls Der Weisse Hai ("the White Shark").

Decades later, unsuspecting divers find the wreckage of the German submarine and recover the box, becoming the Great White Shark's first victims and inadvertently releasing it into the waters off Long Island, where it kills sea mammals, pets and random people.

The novel's protagonist, a marine biologist named Dr. Simon Chase, examines several of the victim's corpses and concludes that the attacker can't be a sea creature, since its teeth and claws leave metallic traces.

All of Kruger's test subjects were too weak to survive the experiments, until they were given a psychotic SS officer and ex-Olympic triathlete, who was surgically altered and psychologically manipulated into becoming Der Weisse Hai, including the implantation of steel claws and teeth.

Additionally, instead of an amphibious human, the titular creature was redesigned as a human/great white shark hybrid capable of evolving legs, arms and lungs.