A two-day cat-and-mouse chase through the streets of uptown Manhattan as quadriplegic detective Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs try to outguess Thompson Boyd, a man whose past has turned him into a killing machine. Boyd is after a high school girl from Harlem. The motive may have to do with a term paper that the girl is writing about an ancestor who was active in the early civil rights movement but was arrested for theft and disgraced. Description in Spanish: Geneva Settle, estudiante afroamericana de Harlem, investiga en una biblioteca de Nueva York la historia de un antepasado suyo, Charles Singleton, un esclavo liberto del siglo XIX. Pero alguien vigila todos sus movimientos con el unico objetivo de acabar con su vida. El celebre criminalista Lincoln Rhyme y su equipo se ocuparan del caso. Quien persigue a Geneva? Y por que esta interesado en matarla? Que esconde la historia de Charles Singleton?