A new type of serial killer is stalking the streets of New York - one more devious and disturbing than ever before. They call this butcher The Skin Collector: a tattooist with a chamber of torture hidden deep underground. But instead of using ink to create each masterpiece, the artist uses a lethal poison which will render targets dead before they can even entertain the prospect of escape. Drafted in to investigate, NYPD detective Lincoln Rhyme and...

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.

Rhyme's cousin has been arrested for murder. It turns out that his cousin, along with others, has been wrongly convicted because the killer knows every detail about the lives of his victims & the men he sets up. This allows him to get close to the victims, murder or rape, then set up others to fall for his crimes by planting evidence.

In the month of December 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 his murders with the precision of fine timepieces, and the victims die prolonged deaths.