In his new book, The Light of Day, Booker Prize winner Graham Swift delivers a psychologically suspenseful story about a private investigator and former police detective who's living through a wrenching anniversary.

Two years before, one of George Webb's clients, Sarah Nash, murdered her husband in the posh London suburb of Wimbledon. George had tried to stop her but failed, realizing too late how very fragile and vulnerable she was. George has fallen in love with Sarah. He visits her in prison every fortnight, and now, on the anniversary of her husband's murder, even takes flowers to the grave on her behalf.

Written cinematically and in a taut, terse style, The Light of Day is a heartbreaking story about loving too much, not loving enough, and the hope of redemption from loveless acts.

Like Sarah, George is himself considered corrupt, tainted. Years before, he was forced to leave the police for mishandling the interrogation of a witness. Ousted, he suffers another blow: His wife leaves him. As a private investigator, he pays his bills mostly by spying on errant husbands and wives.

Initially, the job for which Sarah Nash hires George is no different. Out of kindness, the Nashes had taken in one of Sarah's English language students, a Croatian refugee named Kristina. But Bob Nash falls in love with the girl, and with Croatia victorious and a love affair in her midst, Sarah demands that the girl leave. Bob is to take her to the airport.

George's role is to observe the departure, make sure Bob doesn't board, and report to Sarah the tenor of the farewell. But George has never seen a man so devastated by a goodbye, so much a shell of his former self. He tells Sarah only that Kristina got on the plane alone. It's Bob's devastation, upon return from the airport, that causes Sarah to snap, her realization that simply because Kristina was gone did not mean Bob's love for her also took flight.

Prisoners of their own sad making, George and Sarah provide each other solace and companionship as the story focuses on the consequences of the their prior actions. She asks him to write of the outside world, and he dutifully does, returning every fortnight with new prose. He gives her a world view, quite literally; and quite literally, she gives him a voice. George lives for the day when Sarah will walk out with him, toward a life (he hopes) together.

The Light of Day is layered with betrayals and failed romances, yet filled with each character's tender hope for connection and redemption - often linked. The connections need not be amorous, though. George's long weeks are peppered with a budding relationship with his fierce but loving daughter, Helen.

George focuses on the small details that provide consolation and structure, and these details add light and color to the story: a glory of flowers brightening George's office; cooking gourmet meals; golf with an odd police ally.

George is not without a wry sense of self, not without awareness. But he's consumed by his devotion to Sarah nonetheless.

Occasionally Swift over-uses repetition, a disappointment amid his incisive descriptions: "The day's still brilliant, the sky an almost burning blue, but, even at just past noon, it has that urgent feeling that even still and brilliant days in November have. It's waning already, it can't last." Also, the story sometimes drags.

Still, Swift is to be lauded for a fine psychological tale that, with sensitivity and heart, examines the textures of loyalty and love.

Caitlin Hamilton has worked in book publicity with large and small publishers. She lives in Denver.