A QUESTION OF BELIEF

No wonder Philip Winter feels driven to fake his own death. Once predatory Sandra White accuses him of attempted rape, his life is basically over; even after he's acquitted in court, he can't get another job, and his own wife and daughter think ``he must have done something wrong, if not what she said.'' Abandoning his car by a lake that might suggest drowning, Philip slips away into a twilight world of aimless lorry rides, long days without washing or proper meals, and the occasional odd job, as his unshaved beard starts to come in white. But things are about to get worse, for Philip's wanderings bring him together with Denis Smith, an illiterate thief who's hooked up to an even more dangerous woman: animal-rights terrorist Tessa Graham, whose passion is so scorching that she doesn't mind shooting a few rabbits to make her point. As Yorke leaps back and forth between inoffensive Philip (whose family is sketched with the author's usual brisk authority) and Tessa's makeshift gang—especially her lover Orlando, who takes it upon himself to avenge Philip's suffering, and a student recruit called Jet, who's nursing secrets of her own—you find yourself waiting breathlessly for the inevitable collision of the guilty-seeming and the truly guilty. The liberal use of coincidence makes this a lesser entry among Yorke's doomy suspensers (Serious Intent, 1996, etc.). But fans will find this latest tour of the human zoo powered by all her irresistible momentum.