In New York began to operate a serial killer, and he has obvious plans for the future. He is obsessed with accurate timekeeping and calls himself the Clockmaker. The last minutes of his victims' lives count down the ancient clock with the moon depicted on the dial, which he leaves at the crime scene, and this is the only clue. The brilliant criminal Lincoln Ryme, chained to a wheelchair, along with his student and assistant Amelia Sachs takes up the investigation of this unusual case. This time, a new strong player appears in the team of detectives, Catherine Dance, a police psychologist, a specialist in kinesics - body language, because "the most dangerous criminals, as a rule, are those whose motives are difficult to understand." But the logic of the criminal is elusive, like himself, unpredictable, calculating every step and every second in terrible murder scenarios.