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Lin­coln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are on the trail of another bril­liant mur­derer. The killer is nick­named “The Watch­maker” due to his pen­chant for leav­ing clocks at the scenes of his crimes. But, The Watch­maker is not who — or what — he seems to be. Deaver pro­vides plenty of twists and sub­plots to keep the reader guess­ing. The prob­lem, how­ever, is that these twists don’t keep Rhyme and Sacks guess­ing. They remain one step ahead of their quarry through­out the book, which takes the fun out of it. Their appar­ent omni­science can­cels out the plot twists — no mat­ter what hap­pens, the detec­tives are always pre­pared for it. Deaver’s next book would ben­e­fit from fewer unnec­es­sary twists (maybe a sin­gle plot that can sus­tain an entire novel?) and fewer imme­di­ate suc­cesses for the protagonists.