Lincoln Rhyme returns in The Cold Moon, a roller coaster of a thriller that pits Lincoln and Amelia Sachs against time itself. On a freezing December night, with a full moon hovering in the black skies over New York City, two people are brutally murdered—their prolonged deaths marked by eerie calling-cards: moon-faced clocks ticking away the victims' last minutes on earth. More murders are planned, and Rhyme and his team have only hours to stop the icy-cold, brilliant Watchmaker, whose obsession with time drives him to plan his carnage with the precision of a fine timepiece. While the cat-and-mouse search for the killer proceeds, Amelia Sachs must balance her efforts to catch the Watchmaker with her job as lead detective on the first homicide case of her own, in which she unearths shocking revelations from the past that threaten to undermine her very relationship with Lincoln Rhyme. An unlikely ally appears on the scene in the form of California Bureau of Investigation special agent Kathryn Dance, one of the nation's leading experts in interrogation and kinesics—body language. Despite Lincoln's skepticism about witnesses, and her distrust of physical evidence, the two form a curious alliance in the heart-stopping quest to find the Watchmaker. The rest of the team is present too—tech-minded Mel Cooper, dogged Lon Sellitto, hip Fred Dellray, and the newest addition: rookie Ron Pulaski. Deaver's lightning-fast prose keeps the two cases racing along in almost real time, with more plot twists and surprises than in any previous book of his, as we realize that the Watchmaker may not be simply a murderous lunatic, but a far more cunning villain than anyone could guess, and the most terrifying and mesmerizing bad guy to ever come from the mind of Jeffery Deaver.