The Nothing Man

The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard

Paperback, 304 pages

Published 20th August 2020 by Corvus

Shelves: adult-fiction, arc-or-review, books-i-own, contemporary, crime-thriller-mystery, death, en-route, rape, read-in-2020, realistic-fiction

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Description via Goodreads:

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 realizes 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...

I didn't really know what to expect when I was offered The Nothing Man for review - the description was vague, but intriguing. I am so glad I decided to read this book as it is both different and captivating, a book that is guaranteed to get almost anybody gripped.

The story starts by introducing us to The Nothing Man - a man called Jim Doyle who works as a supermarket security man, when he shockingly discovers that a book has been written about him. The book consists of alternating chapters, some consisting of Eve Black's novel and the rest from Jim's perspective, showing his reaction to the instantly popular publication.

The Nothing Man is a book inside a book. The book is written by Eve Black, a woman who was a witness to her sister and her parent's demise at the hands of The Nothing Man, a serial killer who prowled Ireland over twenty years ago, leaving a trail of devastation but absolutely no trace of his identity - hence his name. Eve is the only person to have witnessed and survived one of this man's crimes and makes it her mission to discover who this man is.

As some of you may know, I have had a deep interest in the Golden State Killer recently, since watching his trial and reading the late Michelle McNamara's I'll Be Gone In The Dark. In fact, that's the book that I read directly before this one, and I could see a lot of similarities with this story and the real life case. After contacting the author and reading the acknowledgements of this book, I discovered that Ryan Howard based this book on McNamara's. Whilst I understand that it's important to do research and to make the story realistic, the only reason I didn't rate this book higher was because it often felt like a carbon copy of the actions of the killer in I'll Be Gone In The Dark. However, if you haven't read McNamara's book or know about the Golden State Killer case in detail, I doubt that this will concern you at all. The author of this book did well to portray McNamara's message that once you discover who killer is, he really is nothing.

I really enjoyed this book from the very start. Both Eve and Jim were very well developed, interesting characters. The story was super compelling, the format only making it more so. I enjoyed the short chapters as they kept my attention and made it so easy just to tell myself 'just one more chapter' - this book is the definition of a 'page-turner'. This is a very well written,  well paced, engrossing read that will have you riveted until the very end. Highly recommended for anyone interested in thrillers, fictional or true crime reads.