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Jasper Fforde has
written four excellent books about Thursday Next, so purchasing his latest
work was a no-brainer. The Thursday Next Books – The Eyre Affair,
Lost in a Good Book, Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten
are a completely original genre and concern Thursday’s adventures literally
within literature, where she has to track down various villains who are
trying to alter particular works of fiction to their own ends. Not only are
these books very different and very clever, but they are also quite amusing.
Although The Big Over Easy is set in the same “universe” as the
earlier books, and is written in a similar style, there is no mention of
Thursday Next. We have the pleasure of meeting D.I. Jack Spratt and his
assistant Mary Mary who work in the Nursery Crimes Division of the Reading
Police Department. The plot is on the face of it fairly simple, as
summarised on the cover of the book. “Ovoid D-class nursery celebrity Humpty
Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III, minor baronet, ex-convict and former millionaire
philanthropist is found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area
of town. Evidence points to his ex-wife who has met with an accident down at
the Yummy-Time biscuit factory.”
Things are never as straightforward as they first seem however, and before
long “Jack and Mary find themselves grappling with a sinister cross-border
money laundering, bullion smuggling, problems with beanstalks, titans
seeking asylum and the cut and thrust of international chiropody.”
This is a wonderful, light-hearted book. On one level it can be taken as a
satire on detective novels, but this is a well crafted novel that hangs
together seamlessly. If you have not tried the Thursday Next books (why
not?) then give this one a go. If you have, then why haven’t you read this
already? The good news is that we can expect the return of Jack Spratt and
Mary Mary in the Fourth Bear, which is presumably a take on the Goldilocks
Caper. If you cannot wait for the sequels, then extras such as deleted
scenes and out takes from all five books are available on
www.nurserycrime.co.uk. |