Book: The Nothing Man
Author: Catherine Ryan Howard
Pages: 295
Read on: Kindle
Read in: 3.5 hours
Plot Summary:
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.
Things I Liked:
1. This was my second book by Catherine Ryan Howard. 56 Days being the first. I really loved 56 Days and so, when I realised that the author has written other crime thrillers before this, I simply had to try out another of her highly acclaimed books- The Nothing Man. Happy to report, the book lived up to its hype.
2. The Nothing Man is written as a book-in-a-book format, which is a really engaging way to tell a crime story. So, we get to read Eve's- the sole survivor of a brutal serial killer dubbed 'the Nothing Man' by the press because the cops had no leads on him- book and we get to see the events of the present timeline from the killer's perspective. A very interesting narrative structure, which works very well in this book.
3. The book-in-a-book is a retracing and re-telling of the Nothing Man's crimes. Highlighting the stories of the victims- their backgrounds, lives and families- in the days leading to their attack. It is nicely written and helps us get a sense of the killer's victimology and modus operandi. It helps the reader get a little bit inside the mind of this twisted person and to see the sadistic ways in which he continued to torment some survivors even after attacking them.
4. The rest of the narrative is told from the perspective of Jim aka the Nothing Man, who, deservingly of his moniker, is an abject, pathetic loser. As he reads the book, we see him get increasingly angry, frustrated and careless. He wants to kill Eve at all costs before she somehow reveals his identity to the cops. Jim is somehow certain Eve knows who he is- he doesn't know how she does, but he is convinced she does. So, we watch Jim unravelling and also, get to see all the red flags in him that no one in his life seemed to have noticed.
5. The ending of this book is fantastic and very, very satisfying! Not gonna give much away, but it is nicely done.
Rating: 5/5
A really great (and different from run-of-the-mill) crime thriller to sink your teeth into if you love the genre.
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