Lincoln Rhyme and partner/paramour Amelia Sachs face a criminal whose ingenious staging of crimes is enabled by a terrifying access to information.... Rhyme's cousin Arthur has been arrested on murder charges, and the evidence against the relative Lincoln hasn't seen in years is perfect--too perfect. When Rhyme and his crew look into the strange set of circumstances surrounding his cousin's alleged crime, they discover tangential connections to a company that specializes in collecting and analyzing consumer data. Further investigation leads them to a tragedy from Rhyme's adolescence and some startlingly Orwellian revelations: Big Brother is watching your every move and could be a homicidal maniac.

Lincoln and his partner, Amelia Sachs, piece together a deadly pattern of similarly vicious frame-ups that leads them to the imposing Strategic Systems Datacorp and a master of identity theft and manipulation known only as "522". And when "522" learns the identities of the crime fighting team, the hunters become the hunted.