The Perfect Predator

Christine Lakin is the principal narrator of Strathdee's story of her terrifying and frantic mission to save her husband, psychologist Thomas Patterson, from the deadly and multidrug-resistant superbug A. BAUMANNII. Lakin sweeps listeners into an account as terrifying as it is enthralling. When every approved treatment fails, Strathdee looks for any alternatives, finding a possibility in phage therapy, dismissed a century ago by clinicians. Lakin's portrayal of Strathdee's hunt presents true desperation, while passages on the history of antibiotics and the mounting difficulties faced by contemporary medicine ring with authority. Her husband's side is not forgotten; interludes by Dan Woren give listeners Patterson's perspective on fighting one of nature's most lethal bacteria. E.J.F. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

Starred review from February 11, 2019
Epidemiologist Strathdee and psychiatrist Patterson are vacationing in Egypt in 2015 at the onset of this gripping and intriguing medical thriller. After crawling into a pyramid, Patterson falls violently ill. Strathdee, his wife, initially attributes his sickness to food poisoning, but doctors in an Egyptian clinic soon diagnose acute pancreatitis, later found to be complicated by a football-sized pseudocyst infected with an antibiotic-resistant superbug. Eventually medivaced home to San Diego, Patterson is hospitalized while Strathdee balances her role as a loving caregiver with a “pit bull scientist’s” determination to save her 69-year-old husband. He suffers several bouts of septic shock, goes into coma, and is placed on a ventilator. With the support of a global team of doctors and researchers, Strathdee pursues a nearly forgotten century-old treatment called phage therapy, which employs a virus administered through drains and IV, “the perfect predator,” to wage battle against the menacing bacteria. After eight weeks of phage therapy and a total of nine months in the hospital, Patterson is discharged to his home, where he continues to improve. Along with the chronicle of Patterson’s struggle is the authors’ incisive commentary on the alarming superbug problem worldwide, which they assert is perhaps even more concerning to the human race than climate change. This page-turner of a couple’s determination to survive also serves as a dire warning regarding the consequences of the overuse of antibiotics. Agent: Gail Ross, the Ross Yoon Agency.

Starred review from May 1, 2019

Strathdee (associate dean of global health sciences) and Patterson (psychiatry, both UC-San Diego) were vacationing in Egypt in 2014 when Patterson fell ill. His condition became critical, leading to his being medevaced, first to Germany, and later to the hospital at UC-San Diego. Once aware that her husband's deteriorating condition was owing to his having been infected with one of the most lethal bacteria in the world, Strathdee scoured infectious disease research for treatments to combat the bacteria that was killing him. She learned that a century earlier some physicians and scientists had found that viruses called phages had been effective in destroying bacteria. At the time of Patterson's infection, phage therapy was being studied in few places, but two included Texas A&M and the U.S. Navy Biomedical Center. Generous help from both facilities, as well as the FDA allowing unprecedented experimental treatment, gave Strathdee and Patterson hope that Patterson's life could be saved. Narrator Christine Larkin could not have engaged the listener more thoroughly. Twists, turns, hope, and despair are presented in a compassionate and appealing voice. Interspersed in Strathdee's narrative are short interludes from the perspective of Patterson, read by Dan Woren. With both voices, the listener learns of the loving relationship and mutual respect the couple shared before, during, and after the months of fear and uncertainty. VERDICT This story of a life and death fight against an antibiotic-resistant superbug is pertinent to every person on the planet and written to be accessible to a general audience. Both fiction and nonfiction fans will relish this story.--Ann Weber, Los Gatos, CA

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