Book review: Blood Orange, by Harriet Tyce

In the opening chapters of this debut novel from Edinburgh native Harriet Tyce we are thrown into the chaotic world of Alison Wood, a London lawyer who divides her time between her husband and daughter, her illicit affair and the high-profile murder case that has just been handed to her. Even with all this on her plate, she still manages to find the time to drink her nights away with whatever tipple she can get her hands on.
Harriet TyceHarriet Tyce
Harriet Tyce

Possible sources of inspiration for this scenario are not hard to find: there’s something of the unreliable alcoholic narrator of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl On The Train here, a little bit of the splintering marriage of the BBC’s Dr Foster there, plus a splash of Pretty Little Liars’ threatening anonymous texting. It’s a formula you might reasonably expect to create a gripping tale.

Prior to writing Blood Orange, Tyce practised as a barrister for a decade, and these years clearly inform a lot of the technical aspects of the story. The legal terminology comes off the page with authority and confidence – Tyce clearly knows what she is talking about. Her detailed descriptions of legal proceedings, albeit somewhat confusing at times, carry the scenes in which Alison sits face to face with a woman about to be convicted for the brutal murder of her husband. The parallels between her client’s life and her own are unavoidable, and for Alison this is simply the first raindrop in a downpour that is about to flood her life.

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Unfortunately, Blood Orange doesn’t have all that much more to offer beyond this promising set-up. The normal home life that Alison craves but can’t seem to help but ruin is underdeveloped, and the murder case – arguably the most interesting part of the story – gets swept aside in favour of repetitions of booze, cheat, pass out. A legal thriller this certainly is not.

While there are a few twists and turns along the way, they all arrive within the last quarter of the book, and some of the more interesting questions they raise are quickly brushed under the carpet to make way for an easily digestible ending. And speaking of the ending, for many readers some rather clumsy foreshadowing is likely to ruin a twist before the author is ready to reveal it. - Rhona Shennan

Book review: Blood Orange, by Harriet Tyce, Wildfire, £12.99