Sinister and gripping, I really enjoyed this book. There were lots of twists and turns that kept me guessing.
I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Wow-what an outstanding read. Totally compelling and so well-written the plot is so clever. I really did not want this book to end. Looking forward to reading more from this author. Recommended.
Also, what a fabulous cover.

Wow what a seriously stunning book! Loved The main character Eve and thought the plot was brilliant, kinda a book within a book, it was seriously fast paced and thrilling I couldn’t put it down, the ending was great too and did not disappoint me, a very well written book full of suspense, it gave me chills! Loved it 5 stars all day long from me.

This was a very twisted thriller with two main characters, the perpetrator and the author. The killer reads the story about his crimes., written by one of his victims, who survived, An interesting concept and a terrifying but engrossing story.

Eve Black is a survivor. When she was a young girl she was in the house when a killer broke into the family home and killed her parents and younger sister. Eve only survived as she had woken in the night and wasn’t in her bed when the killer looked into her room. Twenty years later Eve writes The Nothing Man. It is her memoir and a true crime book about serial killer The Nothing Man – the man responsible for the death of her family and numerous other murders in Ireland.

Jim Doyle is the security guard at a supermarket. His world is turned upside down when he spots a customer buying a copy of The Nothing Man. Years ago Jim was The Nothing Man. Technically he still is – The Nothing Man was never caught or held to account for the crimes he committed. Why is Eve Black publishing her story now? What could she have to say?

Eve is using her book to announce she is going to identify The Nothing Man. She believes the work she put in when researching his crimes has allowed her to work out the identity of the man that took her family from her. Jim realises that this cannot be allowed to happen. His life is far from ideal but there is no way he is going to allow Eve Black to make him pay for crimes he has managed to get away with for over two decades. The Nothing Man will need to be born again – one more victim is needed.

Rest assured that nothing in this review contains spoilers. The blurb and opening chapters introduce Jim and Eve and readers are made fully aware of their respective backgrounds. What I loved about this new thriller from Catherine Ryan Howard was that we know exactly who the killer is, we see the devastating legacy the killer’s crimes caused and you need to know how the killer reacts when he starts to feel a net closing in on him.

The Nothing Man (Eve’s book) covers the murder of her family. As the reader we don’t just get to read Eve’s written account of events but Catherine Ryan Howard takes us back in time to when the killer was active and committing his crimes. The narrative covers both timeframes (then and now) so we can have a comprehensive picture of the man Jim Doyle was and the man he has become. This is also the case for Eve Black who survived a home invasion and escaped the murderer to grow up in a remote cottage with her grandmother where she was sheltered from the potential of a second attack. Eve is determined to tell her story and she plans to find justice for her family and the other victims.

Reading (partially) like a true crime novel, but with lots of extra content which firmly marks it as a gripping crime fiction read, The Nothing Man is one of those wonderful bookish delights you always hope to pick up. The characters leap out the pages and are vividly realised, the story is so engaging that you will yourself to read one more chapter as you need to know what’s coming next. As a reader you want to be picking up a book which makes you glad you read it – that’s The Nowhere Man. I loved it.

A fantastic page turner featuring one of my favourite styles - a book within the book! I really enjoyed the fresh approach. It had a true crime feel, as the identity of the killer is known from the start being written from the killers point of view. Great plot, great characters and a really interesting style. A definite must read if you are looking for a new and interesting twist on a typical thriller.

Talk about a page turner and hard to put down. This book had me hooked from page 1. Eve’s family were murdered by The Nothing Man, when she was 11. She is the only survivor. Years later, she writes a true real life crime book, which we get to read. But we are not the only reader, The Nothing Man is reading too and Eve is determined to find the killer, before he finds here.
I literally could not put this book down. I read it over 24 hours, only stopping to do the usual. This book is highly recommended.

I love Catherine Ryan Howard’s novels so I was really keen to read this one and I’m so happy to say that I loved it! The Nothing Man follows two characters: Jim – a security guard who appears like an ordinary 60-something man; and Eve who has just published her memoir. Eve is the only surviver of the nothing man and her book is all about this man and how she desperately wants to find out who he is. I loved the cat and mouse element of this novel, and was really tense knowing that the nothing man knew about Eve’s book and was reading it. I also loved all the excerpts from Eve’s book and to see what she had written and uncovered about her attacker. This book was so gripping and I honestly couldn’t put it down. It was chilling at times, especially how much it echoes the Golden State Killer’s attacks. I definitely recommend this book!

Well this is a very clever novel. A story within a story, so to speak. From the very beginning of the book we, the readers, know the identity of the eponymous Nothing Man, a large proportion of the story is told from his point of view after all. And we get to relive some of his most heinous crimes with him as he reads the autobiography of one of the only people to survive his vicious attacks. Jim Doyle is a very troubled man, his past quite shocking and not just because of his past crimes. There is far more to be revealed about him than that.

Reading the book is almost list reading a true crime novel, but the fictitious non-fiction chapters are interspersed with scenes from Jim's life, his obsession with learning just how much the book's author, Eve Black, really knows. She vows to expose the man who murdered her family, but can she? It made for a very unusual reading experience, part shocking by the nature of the crimes, but also intriguing as you get a really sharp focus on the psychology of both victim and aggressor in two very different styles.

I really enjoyed the styling of the 'book' elements of the novel, the way in which Eve examined not only the lives of some of the victims but also her approach to researching the book. It was almost an instructional guide on how to capture a murderer but including the emotions and impact of the crimes. It was not done in a sensational way, there was almost a clinical nature to the description at times, although there was no doubting the scars that the surviving victims bore. But it felt like a survivor's tale, authentic and yet taunting. Goading the 'Nothing Man' to come out of hiding.

As for Jim - well he is a character that many will recognise. Carefully drawn so as not to be too much of a caricature of a 'bad guy', but maintaining an arrogance and sense of entitlement that he never quite managed to realise. You know he has a lot to lose, and his anger bubbles just below the surface. You can feel it emanating from the page, barely concealed and you wonder just how he got away with his crimes for so long. As you read, you understand more, but it also makes you ask questions of yourself and how easily you would recognise a killer in your midst and how, or if, you would do anything about it.

It is a story beset with secrets and shocking revelations, a slow burning novel that held my attention without ever resorting to cheap shocks or unnecessarily graphic narrative. Very cleverly constructed and executed, this book within a book is certainly recommended for fans of a good cat and mouse chase.

Brilliant new look at the serial offender. A completely off the wall approach to bringing the perpetrator to justice. All the prerequisite serial killer traits are in the right places, except our protagonist stops before he gets caught. And so, years later a driven survivor sets a trap!
Set in Ireland, where serial killers don't exist, do they?
Super read. Compelling.

Sinister and gripping, the dull mundane thud of Jim’s life wrapped up in dark and chilling obsessive behaviour, this story gripped me from the very beginning. A great thriller to pass away tedious lockdown days! Would recommend this story!

I enjoyed the writing style from the author and the book within a book. However I did not finish this as I could not get past the details directly lifted from the Golden State Killer case. I understand being inspired by a book which was exposing details about a killer who could then be reading that very book thinking they had got away but making the killer almost a copycat down to very tiny details was just too much for me. It would have been better for me if the author had created their own killer character with his own crime pattern, motives and history as just taking these details and profiting off them in such a blatant way just felt in very poor taste to those who lived through his nightmare spree.

Pure suspense, creeping menace on every page, I absolutely loved it. Catherine Ryan Howard's best book yet.

This book was different from majority of the Thrillers I tend to read. In a good way.
With this you have the POV of the killer himself. This made the reading experience for me darker. You get to see how he feels, his growing frustration with Eve. Knowing who he was from the beginning was interesting. Made me more intrigued to see him get caught.

We also get the POV of Eve, a surviving victim. As well as parts of the book she is writing. Jumping between all these POV and the book made me more captivated. It was interesting to have the postscript from Eve's book. Or the acknowledgements.

The twist towards the end shocked me. Even though looking back clues where there. I just looked past them, too deep into the story to try analyse what was being told to me. Even the twist from the killers side surprised me.

Reading Eve's experience from the night her family was murdered was heartbreaking. So was all the other victims stories. It was a dark and intense read, that captivated me from the very start. I was rooting for Eve to catch the killer and get the justice they all deserve.

Woah!! I couldn’t put this book down, it pulled me right in from the start. A book within a book, it felt so real. If you like a crime/thriller book this is a must read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in return for an honest and unbiased opinion.

There has been a lot of hype surrounding this book and I was very eager to read it. This is a book within a book and it sounds a great concept. I enjoyed this book but didn’t totally love it. At times I felt it dragged a bit and other times I was totally enthralled. 3.5 🌟

I really enjoyed this book, very cleverly written! I got so into it I began to wonder if this was actually a true story. Great book, highly recommend if you like creepy thrillers! Look forward to reading more

I started this but it didn't really hold my attention. Nothing wrong with it - just wasn't distinctive enough to make me want to keep reading. DNF

This was such an original and unique story line, I absolutely loved the idea behind it and the way it was laid out. I didn’t love the execution of the ending but the rest of the story, the suspense and the mystery was perfect!

The Nothing Man is a fantastic thriller with a structure than I haven't seen done before in my many years of reading. Two interlocking perspectives is nothing particularly new, however I haven't seen an author effectively include a book within a book before, and it was done beautifully. You don't just get snippets of another reference source, there is the entirety of a fictional memoir within these pages. So you alternate between serial killer and victim.

On the one hand you follow Jim Doyle, a sixty odd year old security guard who would pass for a regular man on the high street. But Jim has some dark and shocking secrets to hide, and when Eve Black publishes her memoirs, those secrets all come rushing to the surface. As Eve Black was the only survivor of The Nothing Man almost two decades previously. And Jim Doyle is The Nothing Man. Or he was. Eve has spent years piecing together details of that night and from The Nothing Man's previous attacks and has now published them in a no holds barred memoir, deeply reminiscent of some of the true crime podcasts I have delved into more recently. Jim finds himself fascinated and disgusted by the memoir in equal measure, but he is drawn to read on to discover just what Eve has remembered and whether his identity is in danger of being discovered.

If you have a squeamish side, then you may want to think twice about reading this novel as Catherine Ryan Howard has clearly done a huge amount of research into the behaviour of serial killers, and holds nothing back in her recounting of his actions. I recognised little details from actual real life events - such as a killer entering properties to leave equipment like rope and a knife days or hours before the actual attacks. Whilst the events depicted are horrific, it is the little details that make them so believable. And these details are peppered throughout this novel, both in Eve's memoir and in Jim's recollections of his past crimes.

I was hooked from beginning to end. Howard captures two very different styles of writing brilliantly; the first, a standard fiction thriller and the second, a true crime expose. And yet despite the differences in writing style, the entire thing flows as a whole brilliantly. I particularly enjoyed the subtle differences between the memories of Jim and the words printed by Eve, as well as some of the psychological unpicking of serial killer behaviour. And throughout this, you also see Jim's reactions to what Eve has printed, his unpacking of events and how his indignation leads to anger and then fury.

This is the first book I have read by Catherin Ryan Howard. It certainly will not be the last.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my free review copy of this novel.