Includes bibliographical references.

It began four years ago with a worldwide uptick of bacterial infections: meningitis in Frankfurt, cholera in Johannesburg, tuberculosis in New Delhi. Although the outbreaks spread aggressively and proved impervious to our drugs of last resort, public health officials initially dismissed them as unrelated. Jake, a white, male detective and now, a single father after his wife succumbed to a routine infection, and his Black female partner, Amy respond to an inexplicable crime. Deep in the center of what was formerly Central Park (but has now become an ad hoc holding area for the sick and abandoned) a massacre has taken place with professional-seeming efficiency and stealth. Why murder 60 of the sickest people in New York? Because it turns out they recovered, and there's one 11-year-old boy, missing, who may have cured them just before their deaths, who may be the key to saving all of humanity.