“The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug”

By Steffanie Strathdee, Thomas Patterson

The memoir describes the first successful US case of bacteriophage therapy written by the patient’s wife (a scientist) and the patient himself. “The Perfect Predator” is not one book but at least four – is this a bug or a feature?

It starts as a boring travelogue about Valley of the Kings in Egypt. I would’ve dropped the book there if I was not reading it for the Bad Bugs book club. After the husband falls ill, the book pivots into a misery memoir detailing long-term care in Egypt, Germany, and the US. When antibiotics fail, it becomes a “hail Mary” search for an alternative but scientific therapy that segues into the history of bacterial viruses (phages).

Every block is intercepted by the patient’s account of his hallucinations that reads as psychedelic prose. As a result, whoever you are, you will find something interesting in the book. If you are a spiritual person who distrusts science and prefers alternative treatments, you will find a guru-embracing attitude refreshing. You will be able to skip the boring history and details of modern ICU treatment parts.

If you are scientifically minded, you will be able to reverse the order. I don’t know who needs to read about an erotic dance in ICU, but maybe it’s just my puritan upbringing showing. The book was nominated for numerous awards and launched a global “treatment by phages” movement.

The perfect predator? A. baumannii aka Iraquibactor visualized using Scanning electron microscopy. (By Vader1941 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

I’ve had privilege of talking to the authors via Zoom – the wonders of Twitter and our famous club. They come across as very charming people. They answered to our niggling questions about notoriously US expensive health service. They were lucky to have the insurance from the University where Thomas Patterson worked. And – more importantly – experimental treatments are free to encourage the development of new techniques. I support and admire Dr. Strathdee mission to make it available to more people.

But maybe if the authors find a publisher that doesn’t push for maximum popular appeal at the expense of the stylistic coherence, the next book will win an award.