Philip Hensher skewered the Brits in his last novel, the award-winning "The Northern Clemency." His new book, "King of the Badgers" (Faber and Faber, 436 Pages, $26), represents his ambitious attempt to once again satirize contemporary England. From the book's outset, Hensher shines a bright light on the country's fragmentation -- on the great divide between "haves" and "have-nots." And at the core of the novel is Hensher's take on public safety versus the right to personal privacy.

In Hanmouth, a fictional town located on a Devon estuary, the haves tend to live within the boundaries of the quaint and picturesque village. Their houses are Dutch-gabled with pink, cream or terra cotta-red fronts. The have-nots dwell in rundown, subsidized housing estates that are fast encroaching on Hanmouth's sacred border. We understand that in contrast to the pleasantness and civility of Hanmouth proper -- not to mention snobbery -- a meanness of spirit prevails in the estates.

Eight-year-old China, daughter of hairstylist Heidi O'Connor, has been abducted from a street near her home in the estates. Heidi and her current partner, a drinker and drug addict named Micky Thomas, seem to revel in attention from the police and the media, and the reader immediately perceives that the kidnapping has been staged.

The China O'Connor plot thread is prominent in the book, and Hensher proves capable in making it suspenseful. Yet two other story lines carry equal weight, pushing the abduction plot to the novel's periphery.

One concerns the spiraling paranoia in Hanmouth. Thanks to the efforts of the Neighborhood Watch Committee, CCTV cameras are installed on every possible surface. Another story line also addresses the issue of privacy. At center stage is a 30-year-old man who might be one of fiction's most pitiable characters. David is a loner, an enormously fat, self-conscious and unhappy gay man. His parents, who have recently moved to an upscale flat in one of Hanmouth's historic houses, accept his sexual orientation but long for him to find a suitable partner. On a visit to his parents, David meets a crowd of men known as the "Bears," sexual predators of every description. The group organizes sexual orgies that attract gay men from miles around.

Hensher mercilessly demeans and ridicules David, and it is this aspect of the novel that proves to be its greatest flaw. Though Hensher's cast of characters is large -- with not one stock figure in it -- there is no character with whom we can identify.

Yet Hensher's work is at times enormously funny. His ear for dialogue, his unique sense of the absurd and his recognition of human self-delusion are unmatched in contemporary British fiction.

Katherine Bailey is a book critic in Bloomington. She is online at www.katherinebaileyonbooks.com.