The Burial Hour

by Jeffery Deaver

Part of Lincoln Rhyme, book 13

First published 2017

A nine-year-old girl watches a businessman vanish from an Upper East Side street in daylight. The kidnapper leaves behind a miniature noose. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs arrive to process the baffling crime scene. Then another abduction occurs near Naples, Italy, with the same calling card. The killer has a twisted obsession with music. He records his victims' dying breaths and transforms the sounds into eerie compositions using a keyboard sampler. These haunting tracks appear online as his signature. Rhyme and Sachs must navigate international law enforcement to track this predator across continents. The investigation grows treacherous as they discover hidden players manipulating events from the shadows. What began as a straightforward kidnapping case becomes a deadly chess match with global stakes.

Genres: suspense, mystery, crime, thriller

Vibes: dark, fast-paced, suspenseful

Tropes: cat-and-mouse, global-stakes

Setting: Upper East Side, Naples, Italy

Period: Daylight

480 pages · Hardcover · Grand Central Publishing

Content warnings: kidnapping

More by Jeffery Deaver

Readers who liked The Burial Hour also liked

View on Siftivo