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Who needs sex and rivalry and conspiracy theories when the star of the show
is the phantom fishkiller—Pfiesteria piscicida? The weird life and habits
of this microscopic monster, recounted in And the Waters Turned to Blood by
Rodney Barker (Simon & Schuster, $24, ISBN 0 684 83126 0), are so
peculiar and exciting and dangerous that they don’t need embellishing with
snippets from the life and loves of the scientists who discovered it. When will
American journalists (or is it their publishers?) recognise that science like
this can be as exciting as any thriller, without the trashy trappings? By the
end, I had more sympathy for the homicidal dinoflagellate than the human heroes
and heroines . . .