Book Review: THE NOTHING MAN by Catherine Ryan Howard

Title: THE NOTHING MAN

Author:  CatherineRyan Howard
Publisher:  Blackstone Publishing
Read: June 2020

Expected publication: 28 August 2020

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 all the stars!

“If you were already falling, you were technically okay until you hit the ground.”

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 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... 

What attracted me to this book:

I absolutely love a book-within-a-book concept, and Catherine Ryan Howard has taken this concept to new heights with her latest book THE NOTHING MAN. If you have ever read a book by the author, you will appreciate her talent for serving up a story that is unique and captivating, and it doesn’t get much better than her latest offering!

My musings:

Eve Black is a young woman who has painfully rebuilt her life after losing her entire family to the gruesome murder by a serial killer when she was a child. Now, twenty years later, she is determined to bring the “Nothing Man” to justice by writing a book outlining her experience of how she survived his gruesome attack, and what she has learned about his other victims during many years of research. She is hopeful that even though he has never left any trace of forensic evidence or any clues as to his identity behind on any of his murder scenes, someone reading her book may have noticed something that could possibly lead to his capture.

In the meantime, Jim Doyle, who has long since given up murdering innocent people and is now living a boring life working as a security guard in a shopping centre, is shocked to see a book with his alter ego’s name hitting the shelves at the local bookstore. He is convinced that he was too clever for anyone ever to discover his identity. The game is on!

Ryan Howard is one of the few authors who – in my opinion – perfectly manages the portrayal of her cold hearted killer without ever crossing the line into making him a stereotype. On one hand, Jim is a boring, ageing man, on the other a ruthless serial killer. How does she fit these two opposites into one single character? You have to read it to find out, but let me just say that this was brilliantly executed. Being so ordinary made Jim Doyle more menacing than the over-the-top serial killer characters I have encountered in other thrillers. An excellent character study!

Another extremely clever tactic in Ryan Howard’s storytelling is that we only ever get to meet Eve through the pages of her book on the Nothing Man, or as seen through Jim’s eyes. The reason why this makes a world of difference here lies in the final answers to the mystery, which I am certainly not going to reveal here. It also allows us, the reader, a certain detachment from the horrific emotional drag of imagining a child witnessing the murder of her entire family during a home invasion one night. This does not mean that emotional involvement is not possible – far from it – but it lends a birdseye view on the scene that will ultimately allow the story’s extremely clever conclusion to fall into place. Sheer perfection. By including different formats of storytelling, the book took on an almost otherworldly quality, like watching a true crime show whilst the killer is also watching. The tension became almost unbearable!

Summary:

In summary, Ryan Howard’s unique writing style and her character study of both a serial killer and his victims made THE NOTHING MAN one of the best mysteries I have read all year, and one I could not put down. If you are looking for an unputdownable, binge-worthy thriller with characters who are so well described that they could be your neighbours, your friends, the person you stand next to on the train, then look no further. I am thoroughly impressed by Ryan Howard’s skill in creating a multi-layered, intelligent mystery without ever resorting to stereotypes. A glowing five stars from me, and I can’t wait to read more from this author in future!

Thank you to Edelweiss and Blackstone Publishing for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.