1970 A Way Through The Wood - Nigel Balchin(Collins)

A highly civilized to cynical close-up of a marriage and an affair which offers some tense moments in a drama of private lives, gives a dusty answer to the practical politics of human relationships. For Jim Manning, a man of probity and principle, in his attempt to find the hit and run driver who had killed a man, learns that Jill, his wife, had been at the wheel, and that the car she was driving belonged to her lover, Bule. Forced to scrap his scruples, Jim covers for Jill who always apologised for everything, felt responsible for nothing. Resuming the relationship with Bule she had insisted was only casual, Jill is given the chance to decide between Bule, a bounder, and Jim, and Jim is left to face the fact that Jill is happier and easier with a man who expects less of her. Spiralling from disillusion to despair, Jim gets his second chance with Jill, forfeits it in a gesture which satisfies his conscience even though it breaks his heart.... A sophisticated game of uncomfortable truths and unhappy consequences, this is knowing, affecting.