Book review - The Nothing Man - Catherine Ryan Howard
Eighteen years after the event, Eve has written a book about the night a serial killer entered her family home and murdered both her parents and sister that she herself escaped from by hiding in the bathroom. She is determined to find the killer, dubbed ‘The nothing man’ because he never leaves any traces at the crime scenes.
Embittered 63 year old security guard, Jim Doyle, comes across the book and can’t resist from getting up in the night to read it in secret. How much does Eve know? How close is she to uncovering his identity?
I powered through ‘The nothing man,’ a superior Irish thriller and a real cat and mouse story that moves back and forth in time, and between the characters perspectives. It's difficult to talk about it without giving the game away, but it's safe to say that this is a book within a book, and we know the killer's identity from the start. It definitely felt chilling and all to real at times, down to the skill of the Catherine Ryan Howard. I also liked how it focused on the victims and the effects on their lives, something that doesn't always happen. It also taps into society's obsession with serial killers and although fictional, this is one of the better books in the genre I have read. Thoroughly recommended.
The trap is another pacy thriller from Catherine Ryan Howard that I’ve also reviewed. Another book that I really enjoyed, which also looks at our unhealthy obsession with serial killers and tells the story from the victims perspective is the superlative ‘Notes on an Execution’ by Danny Kukafka.