Murders Arabian Style

Leela and Meena, those intrepid South-Asian sleuths, are pulled once again out of their quiet retired lives in Tucson, Arizona, to figure out why young women are disappearing from a university dorm in Istanbul, Turkey. The reader knows that a modern-day Harun-al-Rashid has decided to recreate those exotic nights. He has abducted Faridha Ahmed, a scholar of Middle Eastern Studies, who has just arrived in Istanbul. In his fantasy, she is his 'Scheherazade', chosen to tell him the stories...
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Leela and Meena, those intrepid South-Asian sleuths, are pulled once again out of their quiet retired lives in Tucson, Arizona, to figure out why young women are disappearing from a university dorm in Istanbul, Turkey. The reader knows that a modern-day Harun-al-Rashid has decided to recreate those exotic nights. He has abducted Faridha Ahmed, a scholar of Middle Eastern Studies, who has just arrived in Istanbul. In his fantasy, she is his 'Scheherazade', chosen to tell him the stories from the original Arabic. But he reverses the original challenge Scheherazade had to face. Instead of weaving story upon story to defer her execution, Scheherazade is ordered in this 21st century version to bring each story to an incontrovertible end, failing which the 'king' will execute a young woman. This may very well turn out to a mass murder of a gigantic scale. Our detectives get some promising leads. The kidnapped woman has been doing extensive research on the Arabic translation of the Thousand and One Nights. What is it that drives the kidnapper to recreate those ancient times?