Suspicion

McCrum, former editorial director at Faber in London and now the literary editor of the Observer, has written a number of novels that, while gaining respect for their polished professionalism, have not quite ignited the imagination of readers. Suspicion is not likely to be an exception. It is the story of Julian Whyte, one of those cultured, self-possessed loners peculiar to English fiction who seem simultaneously full of self-knowledge and ennui and who, in their compulsion to make something happen in their lives, bring about disastrous consequences. Julian is a lawyer, the coroner in a small English village, who has made a small, comfortable, passionless niche for himself. Into his life one day comes his scapegrace elder brother, Raymond, who many years ago, as a flamboyant Communist, had disgraced the family by going off to East Germany, where he subsequently lived as a party apparatchik of some substance. Now, with Communism in ruins, he has come home, with his striking young German wife, Kristina, to reclaim his English roots. Reluctantly, Julian makes room for them in his life and then, with a thrill of discovery, finds himself falling for Kristina. How this improbable trio work out their fates, with disastrous results, is the burden of McCrum's story. It is smoothly written, never tedious but never exactly surprising eitherDa literate thriller that, if it has aspirations beyond that, does not achieve them. (Mar.)