Of course, things don't exactly turn out as planned. Scozz doesn't prove to be much help at all. As Richard tries everything: wife-stealing, scandal-mongering and slander to get Gwyn out of the picture, he slowly goes mad. Naturally, Gwyn foils every one of Richard's attempts at revenge. In the end, Gwyn exacts his own revenge for Richard's petty crimes, and he gets the girl too. This climatic scene is a little much, and, after 300-something pages, a bit of a let-down.

This dilemma is typical of Amis' writing. As in London Fields, the details in The Information are often brilliantly rendered, but the big picture doesn't quite add up. Still, Amis' ability to transform the mundane into the morbidly funny makes the novel worth reading. The passages describing Richard are gems:

"In fact, physically, at times, [Richard] felt epiphanically tragic. His doctor had died four year ago ('Unfortunately, I am terminally ill.') And that, in Richard's mature opinion, was definitely that. He had a large and lucent lump on the back of his neck. This he treated himself, by the following means: he kept his hair long to keep it hidden. If you went up to Richard Tull and told him he was in Denial, he would deny it. But not hotly."

Advance word on The Information was that it was a roman a clef of sorts about Amis' relationship with his friend, the novelist Julian Barnes. But Amis is too subtle for those kinds of games. Looking for the author in the text denies the fact thatThe Information is capable of standing on its own.

As ludicrously high-minded as it might sound, Amis is interested in art, and the self-indulgent nature of art. The real pleasure of reading The Information comes in the author's adeptness at conveying this:

"The truism is true," he writes," and the criminal is like an artist (though not for the reasons usually given, which merely depend on immaturity and the condition of self-employment): the criminal resembles the artist in his pretension, his incompetence and his self-pity."

Amis willingness to laugh at himself, and at literature in general is one of the biggest strengths of the novel. Amis' gift became particularly important Wednesday night at Waterstone's. Desperate for an interview, I went to get my copy of The Information signed, forgetting that I had taken notes for my review on the dedication page. "Martin Amis is really (I had written absent-mindedly in the margin)...SHORT." Martin Amis read that little inscription as he signed my book. He smiled at me with his brand new, ten-thousand dollar teeth; but it was a British smile, revealing nothing.