Non fiction The Perfect Predator by Steffanie Strathdee and Thomas Patterson , Hachette Books The coronavirus pandemic will surely result in a slew of medical thrillers with microbes as villains. But truth is stranger than fiction in the case of The Perfect Predator , released last year and already available in a paperback reprint. Epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee tells of her “race to save her husband from a deadly superbug”. More important, the book sounds the clarion call about a catastrophe around the corner: antimicrobial resistance, a problem that so concerned father of antibiotics Alexander Fleming that he wrote: “The thoughtless person playing with penicillin is morally responsible for the death of the man who finally succumbs to infection with the penicillin-resistant organism.” Strathdee and husband, Thomas Patterson, an evolutionary sociobiologist, learned what that meant a few years ago when he was infected by “the worst bacteria on the planet”, Acinetobacter baumannii , picked up while the couple were on holiday in Egypt. When all antibiotics failed, and after several near death experiences, a desperate Strathdee suggested century-old phage therapy, which employs viruses to combat undesirable bacteria and that she vaguely remembered from her days as an undergraduate. Hong Kong-born Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun, former WHO director general, is quoted in the book warning that we are on the cusp of a post-antibiotic era. Its implications are terrifying. Fiction The Silence by Don DeLillo , Scribner With Covid-19 in our midst, thoughts of doom inevitably accompany signs of peakiness, however slight the sensation of being out of sorts. The Silence seeks to capture similar feelings of anxiety, resulting from a shutdown, although, in Don DeLillo’s apocalypse, set in 2022, it is technology that succumbs to an unwelcome agent (possibly Chinese). Completed just before the pandemic spread fear to all corners, the American master’s novella is a thriller of sorts. But readers will experience, at most, mild trepidation – from scenes such as “the march through airport terminals, the face masks, the city streets emptied out”. Partly to blame is the disconnection readers may feel from the characters, who inhabit bubbles that isolate through language. Three people (a retired physics professor, her husband and one of her former students) are waiting in a New York apartment for play to begin on Super Bowl Sunday. They are to be joined by a couple flying in from Paris. When all systems collapse, images on the television begin to shake, computers turn grey and the plane carrying the guests crash-lands, although husband and wife walk away with minimal injuries (and have life-affirming sex in a toilet before making their way to the gathering). Fans of DeLillo will recognise his knack for the surreal; others will want real tension. The Russian Pink by Matthew Hart , Pegasus Books Author Matthew Hart lost me with this description: “Not only beautiful but smart too.” The object of his gaze is, you guessed it, a female character named (you have to laugh) Honey Li. Her father is a Harvard mathematician, which might explain how she’s able to write an algorithm calculating the true worth of diamonds. The identity of the owner adds to the value (think of Elizabeth Taylor’s Cartier gem). Cliché and sexism aside, The Russian Pink is a brisk, sometimes convoluted, thriller with timely selling points: Honey is the wife of Harry Nash, an unscrupulous US presidential candidate involved in a scam centred on a Russian pink gem extracted from Angola. When the diamond, estimated to be worth more than US$1 billion, enters the US and is seen adorning Honey’s neck, ex-CIA agent-turned-US Treasury investigator Alex Turner has to tread with utmost care. Alex, a former diamond smuggler, has several pressure points, the most vulnerable being his daughter, who becomes a target. Hart’s rock-solid facts add delicious heft to a tale of greed and murder: he is also the author of Diamond: The History of a Cold-Blooded Love Affair (2002). So when there’s mention of a Hong Kong billionaire having spent US$30 million on a 16-carat pink, you wonder who that might be. Then you check your own prejudices and imagine a female buyer. She’s plain smart.