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.. Images of the cruelty surface every now and again to remind the reader of how cold-hearted the killer was. A psychopathic killer without limits treating murder as a chilling satisfaction of dominance. A Garda officer at the time Ed has always kept the case alive and now works with Eve to flush the killer out. “I imagined him feeling safe, maybe even smug, sure that since he had avoided detection all these years, no one was ever going to come for him now. But I was coming for him, with Ed by my side. It was only a matter of time.” The enthralling suspense that plays out is wonderfully maintained throughout the novel and leads to a cleverly crafted climax. It took me a little bit to get into The Nothing Man, but once it got going, wow! I couldn't stop reading, and as the tension built and built, I was terrified, jumpy and obsessed! My husband says that I've not stopped talking about it, and I just cant help it! This book consumed me, and by the end I could barely breath! The author does a great job of distinguishing these two voices. From Eve we get personal accounts, but in a way that makes sense for an edited, published memoir for public consumption. From Jim we follow along with his thought tangents and paranoia as his worry gets more and more intense. The audio did this very well also in using two different narrators for the two different POVs.

Eve is no longer a child, she is a grown woman with an agenda - she is going to catch the Nothing Man. A writer from a young age, Eve has written a true crime memoir about the Nothing Man, his victims and her personal experience with him the night he killed her family. This is terrifying without being too gory, it’s expertly written with great character development. It has everything I love in a great mystery/thriller. It is linked to the disease plaguing the Childlike Empress, the ageless ruler of Fantasia. As humanity is denying its fantasies in pursuit of materialistic goals, the Childlike Empress' health declines and the Nothing appears to destroy Fantasia. It can be seen as a metaphor of adulthood that lost its ways, and the dangers of excessive pragmatism. A high-concept, fast-paced thriller ... whip-smart and chilling -- Hazel Gaynor * Irish Independent * Jim Doyle is a rapist and a killer that left behind a trail of heartache, loss, anger, and a number of lives shattered and destroyed, but ‘nothing’ of himself. No DNA, no obvious motive for selecting these women, and no remorse. Then he stopped.

Customer reviews

The author’s debut novel is a pretty clever one with a book within a book making it interesting. It is written from Jim’s POV but the book within the book is by Eve. It was confusing a bit with this pattern as the other characters are constantly in and out but it gets more clearer pretty soon. With the POVs, the narrations move between past and present giving few clues step by step to unravel the killings. It almost feels like a true-crime fiction novel. Let me tell you that The Nothing Man is nothing short of amazing. Wow, what a captivating story this was from start to finish. Catherine Ryan Howard hit this one out of the park as far as I'm concerned.

Chapter 11's university "lecture" about serial killers and their victims was extremely eye-opening!This was a great ride!! A bit anti-climatic at the end, but overall a well done suspenseful novel! I will be looking to see what else this author has written! The format of a book within a book is not an easy writing technique but this author does it flawlessly. Each part was easy to understand, equally interesting and flowed well. The queen of high-concept crime fiction strikes again: this is the first novel I’ve read that really captures the chills and twists of the true crime that obsesses us. Catherine Ryan Howard has always been thrillingly good at what she does, but she’s just getting better and better with every book.” That Ryan Howard manages to give Eve a presence in this book, as Jim reads her novel, is a testament to just how damned good a writer she is.

The Nothing Man .. that's what the newspapers called him. There were never any clues to his identity ... no motive that anyone could detect .... and he is reading her book. The Nothing Man knows she will never give up looking for him ... A book to steal your waking hours and haunt your sleeping ones. Chilling and brilliant * Cass Green *

The Nothing is the result of "human apathy, cynicism, and the denial of childish dreams". That is to say, the distaste for stories and the negation of imagination, hopes, and wishes forming Fantasia's very essence, for this world is made of everything that was ever imagined by human minds, since the Dawn of Times. Let me tell you that The Nothing Man is nothing short of amazing. Wow, what a captivating story this was from start Nothingman" was featured in the Californication episode "In Utero" in 2008. The song was also featured in the Cold Case episode "Into the Blue" in 2009. The Nothing is influenced by the mysterious Manipulators: incarnations of the worst aspects of imagination, who seek to unleash the lies it spawns on the real world to break humanity's spirit and take control. They are never seen and can be viewed as a metaphor for everyone shunning originality and twisting beliefs for their own gain. A fiendishly clever psychological thriller ... Howard uses serial killer tropes in original and surprising ways in this tour de force. * Publishers Weekly *

She wants to be a normal child. When she starts her new school... she never tells anyone the truth about how her parents died. This is probably one of the best books I ever read…I absolutely loved the book within a book format…The author did a fantastic job, and if you are a fan of Meg Gardiner, which I am, you will love this book.”excellent narrators were chosen for this audiobook! They really added to the atmospheric suspense; and, Utterly compelling, completely original, The Nothing Man will be the standout novel for 2020. This is a book you won’t forget as Catherine Ryan Howard brings crime writing to a new level.” When I began reading The Nothing Man, I was relatively unfamiliar with Catherine Ryan Howard—a mistake I’m sure to remedy soon. Sure, I was aware that Howard, a fellow Irish person like myself, had been nominated for the 2019 Edgar Award for her novel, The Liar’s Girl, but I had not read that novel or her other two works. After reading The Nothing Man, I cannot see anything beating it for this year’s Edgar—or any other award for that matter. November 1993 at Kingsway Studio, New Orleans, Louisiana; vocals recorded in February 1994 at Bad Animals Studio, Seattle, Washington