I listened to Blood Orange by Harriet Tyce on Audible in June after it was recommended to me by a colleague who is a friend of the author and as a lover of crime fiction (see my blogs). Tyce, a former criminal barrister herself, is extremely well placed to write this debut crime thriller and to meticulously detail the world of the London Inns of Court and the courts of the south eastern circuit.
This is such a clever book and I was gripped from page one. It starts off with a classic crime protagonist who is a workaholic and drinks too much and is seemingly unsympathetic. In this case her name is Alison and she is a wife and mother, main breadwinner, lover of a colleague and clearly not happy with life. This lulls you into thinking that the focus of the book will be the criminal case she is working on. But there are hints from the start that there’s more to it than that.
The case itself is shocking – a woman who has repeatedly stabbed her husband, after years of being the victim of domestic abuse. Alison works with her lover Patrick to prepare the woman for court and to try to persuade her to plead not guilty, given the circumstances. That in itself would have been enough for most thrillers and debuts but here things get darker and darker as Alison’s relationships with lover Patrick and husband Carl both start to fall apart and you are soon wondering who the bad guy is here and increasingly feeling that it’s not Alison.
This is a masterclass in plots twists and raising the stakes but it never tips over into incredulity. All loose ends are nicely tied and I was left with a satisfied feeling on finishing it and an urge to recommend it to my lawyer friend who also lives in Archway, perhaps just round the corner from Alison…..