Amelia Sachs is hot on the trail of a killer. She's chasing him through a department store in Brooklyn when an escalator malfunctions. The stairs give way, with one man horribly mangled by the gears. Sachs is forced to let her quarry escape as she jumps in to try to help save the victim. She and famed forensic detective Lincoln Rhyme soon learn, however, that the incident may not have been an accident at all, but the first in a series of intentional...

In the early hours of a quiet, weekend morning in Manhattan's Diamond District, at the scene of a brutal triple murder, the killer left behind a half-million dollars' worth of gems at the scene. As more crimes follow, it becomes clear that the killer's target is not gems, but engaged couples themselves. Then a witness is left alive. Vimal Lahori, a young diamond cutter, can help Rhyme and Sachs blow the lid off the case-- but has gone into hiding....

A traveling businessman is snatched off of an Upper East Side street in broad daylight; or so it appears to the eight year old girl who is the crime's only witness. The perp leaves a token at the site of the kidnapping; a miniature noose. A crime scene this puzzling demands forensic expertise of the highest order. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are called in to investigate. Rhyme and Sachs' investigation takes an unexpected turn when a similar kidnapping...

Quadriplegic forensic criminologist Lincoln Rhyme leads his team--NYPD detective Amelia Sachs, officer Ron Pulaski, and FBI agent Fred Dellray--to find and stop a killer who uses electricity as modus operandi. Meanwhile, Rhyme is consulting on another high-profile investigation in Mexico with a most coveted quarry in his crosshairs: the hired killer known as the Watchmaker, one of the few criminals to have eluded Rhyme's net.

A cat-and-mouse game between New York police and a killer, hired to eliminate a trio of witnesses in a trial. He has already killed one and detectives Lincoly Rhyme, a quadriplegic, and Amelia Sachs have to catch him before he kills the other two.

A woman awakes in the morning to find that someone has picked her apartment's supposedly impregnable door lock and rearranged personal items, even sitting beside her while she slept. The intrusion, the police learn, is a message to the entire city of carnage to come. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are brought in to investigate and soon learn that the sociopathic intruder, who calls himself "the Locksmith, can break through any lock or security system...

Famed criminologist Lincoln Rhyme and his protege, Amelia Sachs, are recruited to help the FBI and the INS track down a notorious human smuggler before he can track down and kill two families of illegal immigrants that have escaped from his cargo ship.