Of course, Mr. Amis has dipped into genre before. His 1998 novel Night Train was a police procedural narrated by a female cop. It was also something of a flop. His highbrow peers Julian Barnes and John Banville have published crime fiction too, under the pseudonyms Dan Kavanaugh and Benjamin Black, respectively. Neither alter-egos have matched the authors' success under their own names nor the commercial success of Mr. Child, whose real name is Jim Grant.

Meanwhile, reviews of Mr. Amis' new book, The Pregnant Widow, have been mixed.