The Skin Collector (Lincoln Rhyme)
Someone is murdering people, killing them by injecting poison as he creates exquisitely detailed tattoos on their bodies. Lincoln Rhyme, the quadriplegic criminalist, and his team race against time to identify and stop the villain before the body count rises. To make matters more perplexing, the unknown perpetrator appears to have learned how to keep his crime scenes clean and evidence-free, from Rhyme’s own writings (specifically an article about an old case involving a killer known as the Bone Collector). How do you catch a killer who’s learned how not to get caught by the best criminalist in the business? Meanwhile, the Watchmaker, the fiendishly clever killer introduced in 2006’s The Cold Moon (but referred to in intervening books), still haunts Rhyme, even after the man’s death in prison, making it hard for the investigator to devote his full concentration to the murder case at hand. Another suspenseful and twist-filled entry in this always-exciting series. --David Pitt