The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard @CorvusBooks @catherineryanhoward #TheNothingMan

 

The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard

Published by Corvus Books

Publication Date: 6th August 2020

Genre: Crime

Book Description:

I was the girl who survived the Nothing Man.
Now I am the woman who is going to catch him...

You've just read the opening pages of The Nothing Man, the true crime memoir Eve Black has written about her obsessive search for the man who killed her family nearly two decades ago.

Supermarket security guard Jim Doyle is reading it too, and with each turn of the page his rage grows. Because Jim was - is - the Nothing Man.

The more Jim reads, the more he realises how dangerously close Eve is getting to the truth. He knows she won't give up until she finds him. He has no choice but to stop her first...

My Thoughts:

What a great concept for a book! This is something completely different to anything I've read before and is so well executed. 

The book starts with an every day situation, a former police officer named Jim doing his day-to-day job as a security guard at a shopping centre. He has his eye on a suspicious looking woman lurking around the shelves when his attention is drawn away from her to a book which is part of the display of new releases. The book is entitled 'The Nothing Man', the story relating the unsolved crimes of a serial killer some twenty years previously. The author of the book is the sole survivor of the man the media nicknamed 'The Nothing Man', so-called because the police seemed to have absolutely no leads to who the culprit might be. Jim's reaction seems extreme, until we realise that he has a personal interest in the events back in the day.

The chapters move between Eve Black's narration of what happened to her family and the others who suffered at the killer's hands, and Jim's reaction to what he reads in Eve's book. The tension builds steadily as it becomes clear that Jim isn't happy to see the facts in print. He has things he needs to do in order to put this case to bed.  There is a constant feeling that Eve is missing a vital piece of information from what she saw that awful night - her mind is blocking some of what she saw in order to protect her from the horrific events - could that information bring the killer to justice? Could the net be closing on the Nothing Man?

I really wasn't prepared for the conclusion to this book. It is absolutely brilliant and I only wish I could read it again for the first time (if you know what I mean). Now I know the ending it just wouldn't be the same to re-read it - but that's not to say that I won't be revisiting these pages. It's one very clever author to come up with a book of this calibre and I am more than happy to recommend that any reader who likes a good crime novel should get this on the priority reading list.

About the Author:

CATHERINE RYAN HOWARD was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1982. Her debut thriller, DISTRESS SIGNALS (2016), was an Irish Times and USA Today bestseller, and was shortlisted for both the Irish Crime Novel of the Year and the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger. Her second thriller, THE LIAR'S GIRL (2018) was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. She currently lives in Dublin, where she divides her time between the desk and the sofa.