The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard

I must be changing as I have read more novels recently than would normally be take in books. This book is written by an Irish author and set in Cork. It is done in a very interesting style and that is not a bad thing far from it. The book is actually a book about a book. What I mean by that is that the main part of the book is a book by Eve Black. Eve is the victim of a heinous crime by a serial perpetrator, The Nothing Man. So, the book is Eve’s book interspersed with bits from the Nothing Man himself. It sounds terribly complicated but it really isn’t and it is a great stylistic technique that works wonderfully. Eve’s book is essentially written out of her experience as a victim of the man known as the Nothing Man although we know who he is because we read part of his story as we go along. She is the victim of the crime at the age of twelve but now at 30 she decides to write her book and investigates and pieces together all the other crimes by The Nothing Man in the hope of catching him even though his crimes stopped many years beforehand. Along side this we read of the Nothing Man and what is going on in his life as the book is published. It is an excellent crime thriller with things I never saw coming and the style Catherine Ryan Howard has used to tell the cleverly woven story is phenomenal. For a person who is not a fan of novels this was brilliant!