A criminal lawyer navigates a murky world of misogyny and murder in this dark debut
If Amazon reviews are to be trusted, the character trait most admired by readers – even readers of novels where torture, rape and violent death are so much feature wallpaper – is likability. Harriet Tyce would consider this pure denial: what people really want from crime thrillers, suggests her smart debut, a #MeToo domestic noir, is much murkier and more debasing.
Tyce shows her protagonist in the moral greyscale she knows makes her more relatable. Alison is a successful London-based criminal lawyer whose drink problem doesn’t seem to affect her professional capabilities. We are introduced to her as she’s getting wrecked in the pub after work, then going on to a club where she tearfully accuses her colleague Patrick, a vicious but charismatic shit with whom she is having an affair, of flirting with a younger woman. She then heads back to her chambers to have blurred-lines sex with him on her desk (“no don’t stop don’t stop, stop it hurts”). Patrick leaves. Alison blacks out and is found there the following morning by her unsmiling husband, Carl, and six-year-old daughter, Matilda.
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