Susan Darling: A Peter Starke Mystey

When police discover a murdered young woman in an abandoned cemetery, Chief Peter Starke little realizes the search for her identity would lead him to more murder and radical Muslim politics. It is July, seventeen years after the last of the plague victims has been buried. Pandemics of drug-resistant Aids, malaria, flu and measles have left the world with less than 3 percent of its previous population, leaving Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs with about 80,000 inhabitants. The trail leads Starke to Philadelphia, where he becomes enmeshed in a bitter election between the incumbent mayor and Imam Rafjani, whose dream is to turn Philadelphia into a Black Muslim nation. Starke discovers the murdered woman was a prostitute, and that she was killed to prevent knowledge of her relationship with the Imam Rafjani from becoming public. Rafjani and his followers are determined that Starke shall not make that information known.