‘A Lesson in Cruelty’ by Harriet Tyce

Published by Wildfire,
11 April 2024.
ISBN: 978-1-4722-8012-1 (HB)

Harriet Tyce certainly doesn’t believe in keeping things simple, at least not in her latest riveting psychological thriller. Most crime writers tell one story with one protagonist; A Lesson in Cruelty tells three, all apparently distinct and unrelated. The three protagonists don’t even know the others exist, much less cross paths, until more than halfway through, and it takes longer still before their stories begin to tangle together.

Anna is about to be released from prison, and on her last night she shares a cell with a new inmate, who Anna overhears talking frantically on a mobile phone. In the morning there’s a bloodbath, the newbie has killed herself by cutting her wrists and throat. And under Anna’s pillow is the miniature mobile phone.

Lucy has embarked on a masters’ degree in criminology with Edgar, a charismatic professor with some progressive views on rehabilitation of offenders. He involves her closely in his research, and she falls in love with him to the point of obsession.

Scylla and Charybdis are the nicknames an unknown watcher gives two women trapped in an isolated cottage with scant contact with the outside world, one clearly more in touch with reality than the other.

Most of the action takes place in Oxford, a city Harriet Tyce clearly knows well in several of its guises. She offers a flavour of it which makes it feel real rather than a place of academic dreamers.

After her release from prison, Anna sets off to rebuild her life with the help of sympathetic solicitor Tom. Lucy accompanies Edgar to a weekend conference, with predictable consequences and also some unexpected incidents. One of the two trapped women dies. Eventually Anna and Lucy meet in tragic circumstances, and Lucy sees Edgar in a different light. And it’s at that point that the three separate stories begin to entwine and resolve into one.

Complicated, yes, but in a puzzling way rather than chaotic. Each character’s story is gripping in its own way, and the characters themselves have that quality that makes you feel you’d recognize them if you met. Anna’s life before prison was a high-flying corporate one, sixteen-hour days fuelled by the alcohol which brought about her fall from grace. Lucy is fiercely intelligent, but her naivety is matched only by her work ethic. Edgar is described as a maverick who marches to the beat of his own drum; add to that charming and completely self-centred. Then there’s Rachel, Edgar’s second wife, caring, clever and a lot more besides.

It’s to Tyce’s great credit that the result is more intriguing than confusing, and as compelling a page-turner as I’ve read all year.  
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Harriet Tyce grew up in Edinburgh and studied English at Oxford University before doing a law conversion course at City University. She practised as a criminal barrister in London for nearly a decade, and recently completed an MA in Creative Writing - Crime Fiction at the University of East Anglia.

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.