February 17

The Nothing Man – Catherine Ryan Howard

I was the girl who survived the Nothing Man.
Now I am the woman who is going to catch him…

You’ve just read the opening pages of The Nothing Man, the true crime memoir Eve Black has written about her obsessive search for the man who killed her family nearly two decades ago.

Supermarket security guard Jim Doyle is reading it too, and with each turn of the page his rage grows. Because Jim was – is – the Nothing Man.

The more Jim reads, the more he realises 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…

 

My thanks to the publishers for my review copy which I recieved through Netgalley

 

Eve Black is a survivor.  When she was a young girl she was in the house when a killer broke into the family home and killed her parents and younger sister.  Eve only survived as she had woken in the night and wasn’t in her bed when the killer looked into her room.  Twenty years later Eve writes The Nothing Man. It is her memoir and a true crime book about serial killer The Nothing Man – the man responsible for the death of her family and numerous other murders in Ireland.

Jim Doyle is the security guard at a supermarket.  His world is turned upside down when he spots a customer buying a copy of The Nothing Man.  Years ago Jim was The Nothing Man.  Technically he still is – The Nothing Man was never caught or held to account for the crimes he committed.  Why is Eve Black publishing her story now?  What could she have to say?

Eve is using her book to announce she is going to identify The Nothing Man.  She believes the work she put in when researching his crimes has allowed her to work out the identity of the man that took her family from her.  Jim realises that this cannot be allowed to happen.  His life is far from ideal but there is no way he is going to allow Eve Black to make him pay for crimes he has managed to get away with for over two decades.  The Nothing Man will need to be born again – one more victim is needed.

Rest assured that nothing in this review contains spoilers. The blurb and opening chapters introduce Jim and Eve and readers are made fully aware of their respective backgrounds. What I loved about this new thriller from Catherine Ryan Howard was that we know exactly who the killer is, we see the devastating legacy the killer’s crimes caused and you need to know how the killer reacts when he starts to feel a net closing in on him.

The Nothing Man (Eve’s book) covers the murder of her family.  As the reader we don’t just get to read Eve’s written account of events but Catherine Ryan Howard takes us back in time to when the killer was active and committing his crimes.  The narrative covers both timeframes (then and now) so we can have a comprehensive picture of the man Jim Doyle was and the man he has become. This is also the case for Eve Black who survived a home invasion and escaped the murderer to grow up in a remote cottage with her grandmother where she was sheltered from the potential of a second attack.  Eve is determined to tell her story and she plans to find justice for her family and the other victims.

Reading (partially) like a true crime novel, but with lots of extra content which firmly marks it as a gripping crime fiction read, The Nowhere Man is one of those wonderful bookish delights you always hope to pick up. The characters leap out the pages and are vividly realised, the story is so engaging that you will yourself to read one more chapter as you need to know what’s coming next.  As a reader you want to be picking up a book which makes you glad you read it – that’s The Nothing Man.  I loved it.

 

The Nothing Man is published by Corvus and is currently available in Hardback, digtial and audiobook format.  You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0855N98FH/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

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May 3

Death of an Actress – Antony M Brown

Published in time for the 70th anniversary of one of the most dramatic trials in British criminal history.

DEATH OF AN ACTRESS is the second in the Cold Case Jury Collection, a unique series of true crime titles. Each case study tells the story of an unsolved crime, or one in which the verdict is open to doubt. Fresh evidence is presented and the reader is invited to deliver their own verdict.

October 1947. A luxury liner steams over the equator off the coast of West Africa and a beautiful actress disappears from her cabin. Suspicion falls on a dashing deck steward with a reputation for entering the cabins of female passengers. When the liner docks at Southampton, the steward is questioned by police. Protesting his innocence, he makes an astonishing admission that shocks everyone, and is charged with murder. His trial at the historic Great Hall in Winchester draws the world’s media. He is found guilty and sentenced to hang.

But was the verdict sound?

Many believe not.

Now for the first time, Antony M. Brown has secured unprecedented access to the police file, enabling the definitive story to be told. Included in the file are original court exhibits, including a hairbrush with strands of the actress’s red hair. Could a personal effect left behind in her cabin provide clues to how she might have died? Take your seat on the Cold Case Jury…

 

My thanks to Mel at Mirror Books for my review copy and the opportunity to join the blog tour.

A rare dip into True Crime today at Grab This Book.  I generally don’t read True Crime stories as I am terrible at keeping track of characters and non-fiction tends to have a larger list of people, places, names and other important details which it is very important to keep track of.  Also I like knowing that the horrible things I usually read about are all just made up, when it becomes REAL I get uncomfortable.  The psychologists can have some fun with that last confession!

So how did I get on with Death of an Actress?  I will be honest and confess that I rather enjoyed it. Quite a lot as it turns out.

This is the second book in Antony M Brown’s Cold Case Jury collection.  A real life crime is presented to the reader. Through disclosure of facts, compilation of official documents presented in the real life court cases and some dramatic recreations of events penned by the author the reader gets the case compiled for their consideration.

The twist which I loved was that once you have read the book you visit the Cold Case website and cast your own vote as to how you felt the accused should have been charged.  I cast my own verdict on Death of an Actress just before I started writing this review.  Unsurprisingly I did not side with the most popular verdict.

Death of an Actress recounts the murder of Gay Gibson, a young rising star of the stage who was traveling from South Africa back to Southampton on luxury liner Durban Castle. One night Miss Gibson vanished from her cabin and her body was never found.  A crew member, James Camb, was suspected of her murder – he had a reputation for pressing his advances upon single female passengers and had taken a shine to young Gay.

Antony M Brown will introduce readers to Gay Gibson and guide us through her young life and explore her character.  He considers Camb and his reputation and status among the crew of the Durban Castle.  He then uses dramatic recreations to explore the last days of Gay Gibson’s life.  Using witness statements, news paper reports and other primary source material we get a great insight of life on board the Durban Castle for those important days after the ship left South Africa.

The fun in reading Death of an Actress is absorbing the information provided, forming your own assessment of the behaviours of Camb and Gibson and then working out if the arrest, and trial, of James Camb for Miss Gibson’s murder was correct or if some important facts were not given proper consideration.

I must admit I was caught up in the details of the case. I knew I was going to cast my own verdict on events when I finished the book so I was paying close attention (most unlike me). I was shocked by some of the omissions from the court case and I got sidetracked from fact by some “additional” detail which was included after the main case had been discussed, unverified recollections of stories overheard but which had potential to change the nature of the trial.

All very interesting and very well constructed by the author.  Some readers may quibble that a dramatic recreation of conversations which the author could not have possibly have overhead have no place in a true crime book. Personally I really enjoyed the switch from hard facts to the authors own interpretation of possible scenarios – it opened up my own imagination to what may have occurred.

A very welcome change to my normal choice of book. I may even read another True Crime book soon…particularly as I cannot help but notice this was the second case for the Cold Case Jury. The first book has the intriguing title The Green Bicycle Mystery.

Highly recommended!

 

Death of an Actress is published by Mirror Books and can be ordered in digital or paperback format here:

http://www.mirrorcollection.co.uk/products/details/search_results/DeathofanActress/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Actress-story-murder-Collection/dp/1910335827/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524665646&sr=8-1&keywords=death+of+an+actress+book

 

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