Adam Walker is also a serial killer.
He has suffered since birth from what he thought was a curse, a “broken part” of his nervous system; actually, it is a rare genetic disorder called hyper-acute aphantasia. He has no mind's eye, he is unable to imagine, create, or do anything original. At an early age he began to mimic other peoples' behavior as a coping mechanism, and it was a natural outcome of this behavior and his genetic disorder that he would copy art and excel at it.
Adam copies unknown 19th century Impressionist paintings, and passes his work off as original. His paintings are hailed as The New Impressionism and he basks in popularity. But he alone knows the dirty secret of his success: that he is merely a “copyist” and not a true artist.
Adam's first murder occurs in a reflex of self-defense when he turns on his assailant in a New York alleyway and suddenly, viciously, kills. His internal world changes in an instant. The shocking experience of murdering is an awakening—temporarily freeing him from the shackles of his psyche—and it gives Adam hope and a glimpse of what his own true art can be. In a frenzy, he paints late at night after the first murder and after each of the murders he commits, enabling the nature of his art to finally emerge.
Once he sees the light of his newly discovered potential to create, he cannot stop.
Hunting him down is Rae Caldwell, a Sotheby's forensic art scientist consulting with the NYPD homicide department. She deciphers clues from the murder scenes, and together with detectives Sal Imbrosciano and Ben Light, they piece together a profile of the killer while the media and City Hall increase public pressure to apprehend him.
When he paints after each murder, Adam Walker reenacts scenes in famous paintings—from Van Gogh to Roy Lichtenstein—and it's through these associations that Rae Caldwell, based on her knowledge of art history, connects the dots. As she closes in on her quarry, appearing on the local TV news and on the front page of the New York Post, the killer sets his sights on her.
In the climax she is captured, tied up and gagged in her Greenwich Village apartment. Using her wits, Rae desperately fights to survive and buys time, while the artist and killer, Adam Walker, becomes increasingly deranged.
Finally tracking him down, the homicide detectives meet the killer face-to-face. The denouement occurs on the floor of the New York Presbyterian church, after one more killing, and an ironic end to Adam Walker, early, on a quiet Sunday morning.