TO SUMMARISE A plot in the space of a paragraph or two is all too often the hardest task that faces a reviewer, but in the case of Graham Swift's latest novel that task is easy. To say so is in no way to disparage this accomplished work: after all, from Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Persuasion to Anna Karenina and The Wings of the Dove, some of the greatest novels have the simplest of plots.

George was once a policeman. But a cavalier attitude to evidence in his determination to bring a known villain to book has led to both his expulsion from the force and the destruction of his marriage to a self-righteous schoolteacher. Having become a private detective, he acts for Sarah, who