The Nothing Man
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4.1 • 327 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
At the age of twelve, Eve Black was the only member of her family to survive an encounter with serial attacker the Nothing Man. Now an adult, she is obsessed with identifying the man who destroyed her life.
Supermarket security guard Jim Doyle has just started reading The Nothing Man—the true-crime memoir Eve has written about her efforts to track down her family’s killer. As he turns each page, his rage grows. Because Jim’s not just interested in reading about the Nothing Man. He is the Nothing Man.
Jim soon begins to realize 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
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We think we could easily spot a serial killer from their creepy menace and bad vibes. But the murderer in Catherine Ryan Howard’s innovative mystery is disturbing for the opposite reason—he’s so normal. When Eve Black was a child, her family was brutally murdered by a psychopath known as the Nothing Man. As an adult, Eve’s determined to catch him herself, and she’s even published a memoir detailing her investigation. The bestseller is showing up on everyone’s reading list…including the killer’s. Howard messes with our expectations at every turn; for example, she reveals the Nothing Man’s identity at the beginning of the book! We loved, loved, loved reading this tense game of cat and mouse—it’s exciting to flip between the perspectives of the two main characters: Eve and the Nothing Man himself. This hair-raising book will make you lock your doors.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Between 2000 and 2001 in County Cork, Ireland, the Nothing Man, the villain of this fiendishly clever psychological thriller from Edgar finalist Howard (The Liar's Girl), raped, tortured, and toward the end of his spree killed his victims. After the Nothing Man killed 12-year-old Eve Black's parents and seven-year-old sister, the murders stopped. Now, 18 years later, Eve has published a memoir, in which she writes: "I was the girl who survived the Nothing Man. Now I am the woman who is going to catch him." Jim, a security guard in his 50s, spots Eve's book at the shopping mall where he works. After opening a copy ("The Nothing Man. His other name. The one the newspapers had given him. The one no one knew belonged to him"), Jim begins to read. Chapters alternate between passages from Eve's book and Jim's reaction to them. The stakes rise with the publication of a revised, second edition of the memoir, which contains new revelations. Howard uses serial killer tropes in original and surprising ways in this tour de force.
Customer Reviews
See AllLoved it!!!
From the minute I started reading, I couldn’t stop!
Fantastic
This is the third book I’ve read by Catherine Ryan Howard, and I’ve enjoyed each as much as the previous (a rarity for me with this style of mystery-thriller - usually there’s one that’s amazing, and subsequent ones are OK). I think the Liar’s Girl is my favorite, but this one was a close second.
Good
This was my third book of Howard’s. It was disappointing compared with ‘The Liar’s Girl’ and ‘56 Days’. Still good but not as much of a thriller with twists.