4.5 stars

The Perfect Predator is a science memoir from epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee, recounting the story of her husband contracting a deadly superbug during their trip to Egypt in 2015, which mixed with pancreatitis, formed a deadly situation.

Steffanie's husband was on death's door for several months before she started researching the possibility of phage therapy, which was an old form of therapy rarely used in modern times.

The memoir was fascinating from start to finish and the author fused the emotional aspect of having a loved one on death's door together with the scientific element of searching for a cure.

I felt like I learned a lot while reading the memoir about superbugs from this memoir, which is a topic that I haven't thought about since I read Dr. Paul Farmer's book, Pathologies of Power, which included a chapter about multi-drug resistant strain of tuberculosis (MDSR-TB) in Russia, over a decade ago. The topic is an important one because we are seeing strains of diseases that are resistant to drugs that are supposed to cure such disease.

I received an e-copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley, Hatchette Book Group, and Steffanie Strathdee for an ARC ebook copy to review. As always an honest review from me. Also I am so so sorry for taking months and months to finally read and review this book. But I am so happy that I was able to read this amazing book!

Like:
- a unique medical mystery for people who really enjoy this genre
- Not too long of a non fiction book - with it being very detail oriented I can see it getting overwhelming after awhile
- Shows how loved ones are forced to become caregivers in ways they didn't ever think they would need to

Love:
- can't stop reading - so fascinating!
- The lure of an Egyptian adventure- its there when you first start the book
- An incredibly unique terrifying modern day medical mystery that will frighten everyone with the realistic potential
- His wife had to be his advocate, learning so much about his very rare conditions
- Great medical descriptions of a complex illness, life in the ICU, and prolonged time spent in the hospital
- A fascinating read
- A realistic, modern day horror novel (but it really happens!)
- Reading about phages as a way to kill a bacterial infection- fascinating! there's so much more research about this needs to be done in the U.S. especially with antibiotic resistant bacterial (superbugs) forming these days

Wish that:
- Was more upfront that it was mainly a medical mystery and very little about an Egyptian travel adventure. I enjoyed the book this way, but the summary might be misleading to others.

Dislike:
- could be triggering for people who have dealt with medical trauma or severe health issues, as it discusses medical health issues in detail throughout the entire book

Overall, I throughly enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it.

I love biological mysteries that require some recreation of the events in order to then figure out how and what possible disease or organism may be responsible for the condition.
We had a similar experience personally with some friends who are doctors and it is truly an amazing process to try to piece it together. But also, to distance oneself, as a spouse or the patient, enough to then put the medical hat back on and reason through the situation and be part of the solution.
Terrific book. Recommend highly.

#ThePerfectPredator #NetGalley

The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug by Steffanie Strathdee and Thomas Patterson (with Teresa Barker) is an all consuming medical memoir that reads like a thriller.

Steff and Tom are both scientists. While on holiday in Egypt, Tom suddenly becomes deathly ill. He's initially treated at the hospital in Luxor, then flown to Frankfurt, then finally to the US. Unfortunately he has an antibiotic resistant superbug among other horrible things and his health continues to decline precipitously despite the best medical treatment possible. Out of sheer desperation, Steff, an epidemiologist, begins researching far and wide for anything that could remotely save her husband, but it's a race against time as his health gets worse day after day.

I don't want to give the whole book away but let me suffice it to say that I was most impressed with Steff and Tom in their devotion to each other, their sense of adventure, their generosity, their intelligence and their doggedness. Steff grew up in Toronto and was a bullied nerdy girl who even got set on fire once by her classmates as a prank. She ducked and rolled, putting out the fire, then calmly walked home even though most of her hair had been burned away. That anecdote is emblematic of what a smart and tough cookie Steph is. She doesn't give up and she doesn't let emotions get in the way of sound decision making.

The way she saved her husband's life is now saving other lives around the world.

You've GOT to read this book. Brilliant and heartbreaking on so many levels.

The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug by Steffanie Strathdee and Thomas Patterson (with Teresa Barker) is a very highly recommended medical memoir of the fight of a life time that reads like a futuristic fictional medical thriller/mystery.

Steffanie Strathdee is a disease epidemiologist focused on infectious diseases, while her husband Tom Patterson is an evolutionary sociobiologist and an experimental psychologist. The "second time around" couple who had been married eleven years, were empty nesters with a passion for travel. Between the two of them, they had traveled to over fifty countries. To plan a trip to Egypt over Thanksgiving in 2015 seemed natural. While vacationing Tom came down with what seemed like food poisoning, but quickly turned critical. In an Egyptian clinic, doctors diagnosed pancreatitis, which was found later to be complicated by a football-sized pseudocyst infected with an antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

After two emergency medvac flights, Tom was hospitalized near his home at the UC San Diego medical center. Now Tom was fighting one of the most dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the world, and seemed to be losing the battle. After several bouts of septic shock, Tom goes into coma and is placed on a ventilator. There isn't an antibiotic left to treat the bacterial infection and the situation is dire, when Steffanie gears up into professional research mode and pursues the idea that phage therapy could be the solution. She contacts researchers around the world, explains the situation, and asks if they are using phages in their research that could fight the specific bacteria Tom is fighting. Researchers from Texas A&M, and a Navy biomedical center are among the few that step up to help. This is not as easy as it sounds because she also has to go through the FDA for this unapproved treatment.

This book is a page-turner and the action is just as heart-stopping as any fictional thriller, perhaps even more so because this is a real life battle. I was totally immersed in the drama of Tom's illness and Steffanie's determination. Most of the story is told through Steffanie's perspective since Tom was out of it or in a coma. There are short interludes of the dreams/hallucinations that Tom experienced while in the coma. In the age of increasing multi-drug-resistant bacterial infections, this case may be singular at first glance, but cases like Tom's will be on the increase. Bacteria are evolving much faster than the development of new antibiotics. Much of this is because of the very real over prescribing and over use of antibiotics.

The writing is excellent and clearly presents the story in the sequence of the events as they happened. There is hope and humor in Steffanie's story, as she clearly loves Tom and is devoted to the life they have together. She is also fiercely intelligent. Along with the details of Tom's illness, the history of antibiotics is presented, and her research into phages and how they operate. This is a love story, medical mystery, gripping drama, historical chronicle, and completely captivating true-life story.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Hachette Books.

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This was an interesting true story of biological mystery solved by a new treatment. It was well-written in ways that those not well-versed in biology can understand.

Good microbiology story plagued by uneven pacing

I have somewhat mixed feelings about this book. When the authors were actually talking about phages and their uses and history, the book was very good. But while the book should have been hard to put down, the authors instead took too many detours and provided too much information that was only peripheral to the main story. I also found many parts of the book to maudlin. In many respects I have the same issue with this book that I had with “What the Eyes Don't See…” by Mona Hanna-Attisha, where an author’s personal involvement detracts from the story. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book and recommend it for anyone interested in medicine.

The Perfect Predator is a true, captivating, suspenseful medical thriller that will keep the reader turning pages from first page to last, alternating between hope and horror with awe a constant presence.

Steffanie Strathdee is an infectious disease epidemiologist who travels the world as part of her global health research. Her husband, Tom, also a scientist, also an adventurer, never expected to be in a fight for his life after getting one of the worlds super-bugs, resistant to all known treatment. We follow the couple in Tom’s ferocious fight, day by day, hour by hour as one treatment after another keeps the super-bug at bay for short time until the superbug mutates enough to take on the latest comer sending Tom to death’s door with shock and sepsis, time after time again. It is only through the cooperation of doctors, scientists, and researchers worldwide (and even the military) that Tom is alive today.

While the world has become familiar with the climate changes occurring and realize that we may be approaching the tipping point on global warming, relatively few realize the experts are predicting that by 2050, we will be in the post-antibiotic era where a simple scrape might lead to limb amputations and death. “At that time one person could die from a superbug infection every three seconds, making AMR (antimicrobial resistance) a more immediate threat to humankind than climate change.”

This is a chilling book with a very important message that should not be missed. The authors do a good job of explaining all the medical jargon. A mesmerizing read indeed!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Books for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

This is about a wife whose husband contracts a deadly and mysterious disease, apparently from a cruise ship while traveling in a third world country. I've been to that third world country and trust me, you wouldn't want to have any medical problem happen to you there. This lady doctor goes through hell and high water to get her husband airlifted to Europe, where doctors are not at all sure they understand what is going on with her husband's body. This story is surprisingly taut and hard to put down. The crisis is white knuckle and upfront. The writing is excellent. I highly recommend it.

When her husband Tom Patterson developed a stomach bug while in Egypt, epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee wasn’t concerned. The pair had traveled the world and suffered far worse than vomiting. However, when Tom’s condition deteriorates further, he’s medavacked back to the United States. Soon, doctors pinpoint his sudden decline to an antibiotic-resistant bacteria— a superbug. As treatment options begin running low, Steffanie begins her own search for a next-to-impossible cure to save her husband.

At the core of The Perfect Predator is a thriller. Tom is suffering from an obviously debilitating problem— something that can kill him. The problem is stopping the killer. Yet, like all heart-stopping thrillers, there’s an infinite amount of obstacles standing in the detective’s, or health professional’s, way. That’s partially why what authors Strathdee and Patterson have done in writing this book is so invaluable. Superbugs represent a massive threat to global health, but it can be tricky boiling away the wonky science to something approachable.

Steffanie and Tom, through their personal experiences, humanize superbugs, prevention, and the complex process of experimental treatment. Most of the story stems from Steffanie’s perspective as she researches a cure for her husband. She’s determined, inventive, and a skilled researcher— the perfect combination to tackle such a harrowing task. Her frustration is palpable, and provides an insightful look at the treatment process. Hospitals can seem like places where a patient walks in and treatments work like magic, but Steffanie catalogs the difficult behind-the-scenes work that occurs in the worst of circumstances.

Yet, her writing goes deeper than the science. Steffanie’s drive is an intense love for her husband. As the story progresses, she explores her relationship more. Though she struggles through FDA regulations, countless journal articles, and tedious laboratory work, she also shines light onto Tom and the life they crafted together. Their bond is heartwarming and the center of this book.

It’s gripping, pulse-pounding, and yet the bulk of the action takes place in laboratories and a single hospital room. Tom is confined to a coma through much of his treatment, and he recounts this in several interludes. He explains the hallucinations he experienced and the thoughts he focused on during his months in the ICU. These are some of the most effective moments in the book, as they play against the chaos happening around his hospital bed.

Within all of this is both a warning and a call to action. Superbugs are growing in prominence. However, as Steffanie and the amazing assembly of doctors, nurses, researchers, and technicians who supported her husband’s case discovered, there are options. Phage therapy, a process of using specific viruses to attack bacterial infections, proved effective in this case, as well as other. However, it requires broader research and implementation. Steffanie and Tom have done tremendous work in using their personal story as a framework for understanding a necessary treatment.

The Perfect Predator does what all great nonfiction books should do. While presenting the truth, it transcends genres— scientific exploration, mystery, thriller, and even romance. And it does it all by exploring an extraordinarily human story.

This book tells the story of a man who is struck down by a horrific infection and his wife’s experience gathering together a team of researchers who create an antidote for him. Both the man and his wife are medical researchers at the University of California San Diego. On a vacation to Egypt, the husband contracts an infection caused by a number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. He is hospitalized in Egypt, transferred to another hospital in Germany, and eventually returned home to the UCSD medical center where he eventually goes into a coma and is not expected to live. His wife manages to track down research being done on phages, a type of virus that attacks bacteria. Phages were discovered in the 1800s, but the development of antibiotics led to sidelining research about phages in most of the western world. However, the wife, Dr. Strathdee, manages to gather together a group of researchers who are able to isolate and grow the correct phages to fight her husband’s infection, and convince the FDA to allow his treatment with this untested therapy, which eventually allows him to recover from this infection.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, it is a fascinating account of the illness and development of a treatment for this seemingly untreatable situation. It is well-written, and reads like a thriller—even though I knew that the husband survived (he is a co-author), I didn’t want to put it down as the tension built throughout the search to develop an antidote in time to save his life.

On the other hand, I was reminded of an interaction I had with a friend years ago. We were talking about the book Under the Tuscan Sun, which is a story of a couple who buy a rundown house in Italy and their adventures/experiences as they restore it and begin to treat it as their second home. I remember finding the book charming, but my friend was quite negative about it. She was offended by the lack of acknowledgement within the book of the wealth and privilege that allowed the author to have this experience. A few years ago, this same friend reached out to tell me that her husband had been diagnosed with a brain tumor, an extremely aggressive type with very little chance for survival. She also reached out to her friends and acquaintances and was able to get her husband involved in a cutting edge research study. Unfortunately, the result in his case were not as positive, and he died a few years after he was diagnosed.

I find it particularly ironic that the same friend was involved in both of these stories, because after reading this book, I was left feeling much the same way as my friend felt about Under the Tuscan Sun. As fascinating as I found The Perfect Predator, it felt like there was so much missing from the story. I had read about phages in the past, and know that they are used quite a bit in what used to be the Soviet Union. Strathdee mentions research being done there, but never explains why she did not reach out to these people with a history of success using phages. The difficulties she must have faced trying to convince the FDA to allow use of this treatment, and the unknowns about things like dosage and how to administer the treatment felt like they were barely touched on.

So, although I definitely enjoyed reading this book, in the end, I was left feeling somewhat disappointed at what I didn’t get to read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for providing an advanced reading copy.

By its’ title, you might assume that this book is about a person stalking someone else - but that is not the case! This book is about a threatening bacterium that might have been contracted when the couple traveled to Egypt to visit the pyramids and the author’s husband went through a dark and dusty barely accessible passage and he was warned not to breathe the air and then he started feeling unwell or the Egyptian hospital or when they swam in contaminated water.
The couple did a great deal of overseas traveling, so they took Cipro, an antibiotic, but Tom’s health continued to deteriorate to the point that he was rushed to an Egyptian hospital, but he kept getting worse, so he was airlifted to Germany, and they tried everything for what they thought Tom had, “which they diagnosed as acute pancreatitis with the complication of a pseudocyst in the abdomen.
The cyst is an abscess approximately fifteen centimeters in diameter, which is about the size of a football.”
As Steffie,Tom’s wife was an infectious disease epidemiologist, and the director of a global health institute at a major university, she thought that she had seen everything imaginable that could attack a person’s body, but she was wrong!
You will have to read the book for yourself to find out how this bacteria attacked Tom, and how the search for a cure took them back over a hundred years and into a medical discovery that was revolutionary and psychologically disgusting!

The true story of a wife's fight to save her from a superbug infection. It was fascinating to learn about the phage therapy which brought her husband from the brink of death. Tom's interludes gave great insight into what it was like for him while in a coma. Antibiotic resistance is a problem which needs to be addressed.

For those of you who like memoir, and for those of you who like science, THIS IS THE BOOK! I had never before heard of phages---viruses that eat bacteria--- and this was fascinating instruction on the subject. The author saved her husband's life through her own intelligence, quick-thinking, and courage. Time was running out, traditional treatment options had failed, and the author had the nerve to ask doctors to try it her way. I have to hand it to the doctors as well for not brushing her off.

I was grateful that the book didn't morph into pleas to a god, or sappy theology, or a morass of thoughts and prayers. No, it was SCIENCE, and a fascinating lesson at that.. I don't think we can be warned often enough about the risks of taking antibiotics, especially at the slightest sign of infection. For those of you who eat meat, please be very careful about its source; antibiotics may have been injected into the animal.

I was reminded while reading this book that antibiotics are even prescribed for my dogs, and seemingly far too often. "The Perfect Predator" is a source of very good information, and on many levels.

WOW - remind me not to complain about a doctor making me wait before prescribing antibiotics EVER AGAIN!

This was a fascinating and horrifying look at the issue of multi-drug resistant bacteria and the harrowing experience of watching someone you love fall desperately ill and have the medical community largely at a loss as to what to do about it... Through a perfect blend of personal statement, factual recitation, scientific review, and "interludes" by her then-comatose (or nearly so) husband, Strathdee builds a story that educates, horrifies, and enlightens in turn.

It was a powerful and moving read and hopefully will serve as a wake-up call about the dangers of ignoring the ever-growing evidence about the dangers of "superbugs"...

The Perfect Predator is an unforgettable, eye-opening book. Sometimes I get really excited about a book and I talk to everyone I know about it. This is one of those books. I already have plans to purchase copies for friends. Stef and Tom travelled to Egypt where Tom acquired a multi-drug resistant bacterium (Acinetobacter). Despite multiple therapies, Tom is barely hanging on to life. Stef seeks out non-traditional therapies and proposes on phage, viruses that infect bacteria. Approximately 100 years ago, phage were researched for human use. However, when Penicillin was introduced, phage therapy fell out of vogue. Tom’s treatment is one of the first major successful treatments with phage in the US.

Medical thriller that is hard to put down. I especially liked the chapters written by Thomas , the dream-like sequences of his coma. This is very relevant in the age of super bugs resistant to current antibiotics. I will highly recommend The Perfect Predator!

A true story that reads like a horror book.A scientist and her husbands life sent spinning out of control when he come down with a stomach bug which turns out to be a new strain of bug that antibiotics can’t fight.As he lays critically ill she goes to war using every source she can find to cure him.A medical mystery a devoted determined wife an unputdownable book.Highly recommend,#netgalley#hatchettebooks

I could not put this book down. It was fascinating and terrifying. The author's dedication and devotion to her husband was awesome. The medical facts were presented in a way in which the average person could easily understand!