The Light of Day

Swift's spare, moody novel combines the best elements of whodunit noir. George Webb, a laconic British private eye, is desperately in love with a former client who murdered her unfaithful husband. On the second anniversary of the murder, Webb reassembles the events like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, cutting between past and present. ''Swift is a virtuoso of narrative ventriloquism,'' Anthony Quinn said here last year, describing the novel's lean, police-blotter argot. ''This is gumshoe haiku.''