A Lincoln Rhyme Novel (abridged)

New York City is thrown into chaos by the assaults of the Bone Collector, a serial kidnapper and killer who gives the police a chance to save his victims from death by leaving obscure clues. The cops go to Lincoln Rhyme, an ex-NYPD forensics expert left paralysed after an accident on the job. Rhyme reluctantly postpones his ambitions towards suicide and puts together a forensic investigation team, enlisting as his eyes and ears young police officer Amelia Sachs.

Geneva Settle is a bright young high school student from Harlem writing a paper about one of her ancestors, a former slave called Charles Singleton. Geneva is also the target of a ruthless professional killer.

It's the night of the full Cold Moon: the month of December according to the lunar calendar. A young man is found dead in lower Manhattan, the first in a series of victims of a man calling himself the Watchmaker. This killer's obsession with time drives him to plan the murders with the precision of fine timepieces, and the victims die prolonged deaths while an eerie clock ticks away their last minutes on earth.

Rhyme's cousin has been arrested for murder. The evidence clearly shows he did it, but Rhyme agrees to check things out. It turns out that the cousin, along with other people, has been wrongly convicted, because the true killer knows every single detail about the lives of the victims he kills and the men he sets up to take the fall for those crimes.

New York is being held to ransom. Manhattan’s electricity grid has been the victim of a horrific attack...and more are planned. While the FBI and Homeland Security try to determine who's behind the carnage, Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs race to decode the forensics in order to prevent the next assault. But all is not what it seems.