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.

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 quadriplegic since a beam crushed his spinal cord years ago, Rhyme is desperate to improve his condition and goes to the University of North Carolina Medical Center for high-risk experimental surgery. But he and Sachs have hardly settled in when the local authorities come calling. In a twenty-four-hour period, the sleepy Southern outpost of Tanner's Corner has seen a local teen murdered and two young women abducted. And Rhyme and Sachs are the best...

"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 be an accident at all, but the first in a series of intentional attacks....

A portrait of a large and loving family and the challenges that they face together, including low points (the phone call that changed a son's life), the high points (the monkey play that led to his increased mobility), and the strangely in-between (bathing the monkey in the kitchen sink).

NYPD criminalist Lincoln Rhyme joins his beautiful protégée Amelia Sachs, in the hunt for the Coffin Dancer—an ingenious killer who changes his appearance even faster than he adds to his trail of victims. They have only one clue: the madman has a tattoo of the Grim Reaper waltzing with a woman in front of a coffin. Rhyme must rely on his wits and intuition to track the elusive murderer through New York City—knowing they have only forty-eight...

In March of '97, two brothers took a plane to Detroit to secretly meet Dr. Jack Kevorkian. One of the brothers had been a quadriplegic for the past twenty-four years, fully dependent on his ailing mother for all of his needs. He'd asked his younger brother to help him end his life and relieve the burdens on his family. This is the story of love and devotion to family and what it means to let someone go at all costs.