Once again Catherine Ryan Howard gives her reader an incredibly tense read with The Nothing Man. The book starts with Jim, a security man in a supermarket, having a normal day at work until he spots a woman at the book shelves. She picks up a book and when she opens it Jim sees the title, The Nothing Man. The name he had been given years before by the newspapers when he committed a number of crimes, including sexual assualt and murder, in and around Cork. As soon as she moves away he strolls over to the shelves to pick up one of the books and sees the name of the author, Evie Black, the girl who survived his last attack when he killed her mother, father and younger sister. Evie has spent her life with people she meets asking if she's the girl who was invloved in the terrible attack and usually introduces herself as Evelyn as taught her by her grandmother who took her in after the attack when she was only 12. Evie moved away from Cork with her grandmother but never stopped grieving for her family or wanting to discover the truth. Jim leaves work, claiming sickness, and buys a copy of the book to read. He starts reading Evie's story and how she survived due to being in the toilet at the time and now he wishes he'd been more thorough. He was always so careful, he was only seen once, by a motorist who provided a sketch which is reproduced in the book. The 'first look' leaves so many questions. Will Evie finally discover the truth about the man who murdered her family or will Jim find her first?