Hailing a cab outside the Dorchester one day, the gorgeous restaurant critic and photographer, Molly Lane, feels a ting-ling in her arm. It is the beginning of events that neither she nor anyone else could have foreseen. First comes the appallingly rapid progress of a disease that reduces her to an abject state before it kills her. And then comes a far more extraordinary chain of events following her death, which forms the substance of Ian McEwan's implaus-ibly elegant black comedy.

Four of Molly's lovers are present at her funeral. There is the rich old publisher, George, her final partner. There is the Foreign Secretary, Julian Garmony, who is a likely future Prime Minister. And there are two old friends, Vernon Halliday, the broadsheet newspaper editor, and the famous modern composer, Clive Linley, who is working on a "Millennial Symphony" to crown his career. Something of a hypo-chondriac, Clive is so shocked by the speed with which Molly's condition shelved into a state where she was incapable even of killing herself, that he asks a favour of Vernon: if anything similar should happen to him, he would like Vernon to arrange euthanasia. (There are, they both know, people in Holland who will take care of these things.) Vernon agrees, if Clive will do the same for him.

George, meanwhile, is now in possession of some extraordinary photographs of Julian, and shows them to Vernon. Initially undescribed, they are "Incredible", and Vernon feels "waves of distinct responses: astonishment first, followed by a wild inward hilarity". At first, McEwan lets the reader imagine them (like the unknown contents of the mysteriously shocking box in Bu$uel's Belle de Jour), although later in the book they are revealed. Since Garmony is rather right-wing, Vernon feels entirely justified in publishing them, and the newspaper brushes up Garmony's obituary in case he should kill himself.

It is the beginning of the end for the friendship between Clive and Vernon.

Clive is so disgusted that he sends Vernon a card telling him he deserves to be sacked. Arriving after Vernon actually has been sacked, it now reads as gloating instead of outraged: "You deserve to be sacked" has become "You deserve to be sacked" - a neat slippage that typifies the clockwork neatness of the book. Their annoyance with each other escal-ates, until Clive invites Vernon to Amsterdam with a murderous plan in mind. Of course, plans often go wrong. Clive has a glass of champagne in each hand:

"Vernon's in the right, his own in the left. Important to remember that." Should we be alerted to an impending disaster, or is it a red herring? Perhaps the salient line is instead: "he saw Vernon coming towards him with a big smile . . . he had two full glasses of his own."

Clive, although preferable to Vernon, is the book's chief comic butt.

Egregiously middle- class, he is solidly sent up by McEwan whenever we are made party to his sentimental, self-deluded, preeningly fatuous thoughts. He finds the police to be splendid fellows: "To think he had once called them pigs and argued, during a three month flirtation with anarchism in 1967, that they were the cause of crime . . . . They seemed to like him, these policemen, and Clive wondered if there were not certain qualities he never knew he possessed - a level manner, quiet charm, authority perhaps." He also finds the Dutch to be truly civilized, although not everybody comes in for his approval; people who don't share his love of the Lake District, for example: "Surely they could not claim to be fully alive."

It is while Clive is up creating music among the Lakes that he sees a woman hiker having trouble with a man. Unknown to Clive, the man happens to be the notorious Lakeland Rapist, but he doesn't get involved because he doesn't want it to interfere with his musical inspiration: "this was his business, and it wasn't easy, and he wasn't asking for anyone's help." Later, he looks back on the responsibilities which his gift has imposed on him, and realizes he was entirely justified in being prepared "to sacrifice an anonymous rambler" for his music.

McEwan has plenty of fun at the expense of Clive's romantic belief in his genius, and he treats the reader to a good deal of material about musical composition. This mockery of artistic ambition complements the relatively slight nature of the book, which is unashamedly a five-finger exercise in comparison to the aspirations of some of McEwan's earlier work, such as The Child in Time. There is something rather comfortable about it, which extends to the satire. "It's time we ran more regular columns", says a newspaper editor: they're cheap, and everyone else is doing them. You know, we hire someone of low to medium intelligence, possibly female, to write about, well, nothing much . . . . Goes to a party and can't remember someone's name. Twelve hundred words.

McEwan's earlier interests are still here: grotesque private behaviour, the violation of privacy, and a couple threatened by circumstances (Garmony's survival is largely due to his formidable trouper of a Tory wife). The interest in privacy extends to the deceit shown by almost every character in the book, where rottenness is universal; even a music critic with a walk-on part turns out to be a paedophile, and the saintly Mrs Garmony describes Molly as "a friend of the family" who took the photos "rather in a spirit of celebration", while being privately glad that the woman who indulged Julian's "grotesque cravings" is dead. The one character whose mind we are hardly shown inside is the supremely manipulative George. If there is sometimes a sense that Vernon and Clive are being indicted as representatives of a caste or generation, George remains his own evil agent.

Amsterdam is a consummately well-orchestrated performance, and the feel of a major artist operating at something less than full blast gives it a smoothness and a sense of capacity in reserve. If, like Graham Greene, McEwan divided his books into "novels" and "entertainments", then there is no doubt into which category this one would fall.

AMSTERDAM. By Ian McEwan. 176pp. Cape. Pounds 14.99. - 0 224 05170 9.