10 smartest crime novels to read next: all thriller, no filler
Harriet Tyce made her name with her 2019 debut Blood Orange, a #MeToo noir story that found an audience during the Covid lockdowns. Two more thrillers followed and she now returns in 2024 with A Lesson in Cruelty that lives up to its title. The story jumps between three women: Anna, who is about to be released from prison, Lucy who is an Oxford student infatuated with her Professor and Marie, a recluse in the Scottish Highlands. Three seemingly separate stories are then woven together over the course of the novel, a mark of Tyce’s technical control.