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An unputdownable thriller that's not afraid to explore the darkest impulses of humanity. It's also a compassionate study of grief and guilt. I dare you to read it on your own, in the dark. -- Erin Kelly The Nothing is influenced by the mysterious Manipulators: incarnations of the worst aspects of imagination, who seek to unleash the lies it spawns on the real world to break humanity's spirit and take control. They are never seen and can be viewed as a metaphor for everyone shunning originality and twisting beliefs for their own gain. So, when I started, I didn’t expect it to be in essence, me reading a book about a man reading a book about a true crime— and he just happens to be the subject of that true crime book — he’s The Nothing Man. I need to find every one of Catherine Ryan Howard’s books The remarkable sense of this thriller is that it feels like a true crime story because it is so vividly portrayed with an observational quality and depth of rational thinking that imbue a notion of reality. Yet in Catherine Howard’s own words “this is a work of fiction even the facts are fiction”. Truly an outstanding thriller that skilfully holds the question of hunter versus hunted on a tantalising edge. The chapters from the perspective of Jim alternates with chapters from the book. I don’t always enjoy a book within a book but in this case it worked brilliantly. Reading Jim’s thoughts and responses as he read the book was nothing short of terrifying. I applaud the author for writing a book where the killer is known from the start but the tension and suspense is maintained.
The author does a great job of distinguishing these two voices. From Eve we get personal accounts, but in a way that makes sense for an edited, published memoir for public consumption. From Jim we follow along with his thought tangents and paranoia as his worry gets more and more intense. The audio did this very well also in using two different narrators for the two different POVs. The characters are also deeply drawn, the insights into the family’s anguish was palpable through their stories and their sense of loss unmistakable. The author gives us very real insights into the minds and trauma of victims from murder and rape. However, Howard did well to not stop there, as we are led into the mind of the serial killer, who continues to lead a normal life, their crimes oblivious to their families and their identity unknown. Their evil deeds meticulously planned, many serial killers give ‘nothing’ away. So Eve’s strategy to unmask this serial killer is simple; appeal to his ego or insult it!!! A serial killer. His surviving victim. A book within a book. A game of cat and mouse. Some surprising twists and turns. This is all I am going to say about the plot. It’s best to GO IN BLIND! Through Eve’s writing— and I know this sounds weird, but I honestly felt like I knew Eve, though until the end, I only knew her through Jim’s eyes.
Utterly compelling, completely original, The Nothing Man will be the standout novel for 2020. This is a book you won't forget as Catherine Ryan Howard brings crime writing to a new level. -- Sam Blake Eve is determined to catch 'The Nothing Man,' the man who killed her family when she was only 12 years old, so she writes a crime memoir about him, to find new leads, hoping to finally find out who he is after 20 years. I have read books within a book before however, Catherine Ryan Howard uniquely weaves in a true-crime memoir about The Nothing Man who has disappeared after killing her family while the nothing man-killer Jim is reading it. The story brilliantly alternates between passages from Eve's book and Jim's reaction to them. I found it fascinating to see Jim's reaction to the memoir while he is reading it and it makes for an exciting and interesting twist to the story. We know the she was depressed, and how she unexpectedly found some sort of release in writing. Readers learn how she came to write the book, how she found herself working with Ed Healy, a cop who has worked the Nothing Man case decades.
I loved “Rewind”, the first that I read by this author last year, and I am even MORE IMPRESSED with “The Nothing Man”! This brilliant and creepy book blew my mind! I was utterly addicted — my mind was thinking of this book even when I wasn’t reading it — anxiously awaiting the next time I could steal a few moments (or hours) to sit down and inhale this story. The author’s debut novel is a pretty clever one with a book within a book making it interesting. It is written from Jim’s POV but the book within the book is by Eve. It was confusing a bit with this pattern as the other characters are constantly in and out but it gets more clearer pretty soon. With the POVs, the narrations move between past and present giving few clues step by step to unravel the killings. It almost feels like a true-crime fiction novel.
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She wants to be a normal child. When she starts her new school... she never tells anyone the truth about how her parents died. We join him to read Eve’s memoir. We want to scream at him to keep on reading to learn more about his history and we also want to stop him so we can skip the gruesome details about his rapes, the traumatic experiences he caused with his torturing ways to ruin his victims’ souls forever.
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