The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde's bestselling Thursday Next series delights readers of every genre with its literary derring-do and brilliant flights of fancy. In The Big Over Easy, the first book in a new series, Fforde takes a break from classic literature and tumbles into the seedy underbelly of nursery crime. Meet Detective Inspector Jack Spratt, family man and head of the Nursery Crime Division, long suffering under the shadow of the flashy Detective Friedland Chymes with his astonishing number of published cases in Amazing Crime Stories. SPRATT is fresh from a spectacular failure to see convicted three wily pigs for the murder of a certain wolf. The media and tide of public opinion are set squarely against him. Now, new trouble is brewing. It's Easter in Reading-a bad time for eggs-and no one can remember the last sunny day. Ovoid D-class nursery celebrity Humpty Dumpty, minor baronet, lover of women, ex-convict, and former millionaire philanthropist, is found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. Yes, the big egg is down. All those brittle pieces sitting in the morgue point to foul play. SPRATT and his new partner, SERGEANT MARY MARY, search through Humpty's sordid and secretive past in hopes of finding the key to his death. Immersed in a case that reaches into the highest echelons of Reading society and business, SPRATT is walking the tightrope of his career. Before long JACK and MARY find themselves grappling with a sinister plot involving cross-border money laundering, bullion smuggling, problems with beanstalks, Titans seeking asylum, and the cut-and-thrust world of international chiropody. And on top of all that, the Jellyman is coming to town.... The familiar and utterly transformed characters and world of nursery crime are pure ingenious fun. Just when you thought he'd stretched his astonishing imagination to the limit, Jasper Fforde does it again with this dazzling new series. Editorial Reviews Like the Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket books, this one is abundantly playful without being truly geared to children. Anyone who has ever been read a nursery rhyme - and who can tolerate heavy doses of Monty Pythonesque silliness - can appreciate Mr. Fforde's outlandish joking. - The New York Times - Janet Maslin Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, and, well, you know the rest. But was Humpty's fall an accident, or was it murder? It's up to giant killer Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division to get to the bottom of it. Humpty was quite a ladies' man, but a few people thought him a bad egg. Jack has a number of suspects, a new partner to break in and gloryhound/antagonist Detective Inspector Chimes to deal with. Prebble's sonorous British voice is ideally suited to narrating this whimsical, fractured fairy tale; his tone and pacing match Fforde's prose perfectly, and his subtle vocal acrobatics enable him to amusingly bring to life the novel's wildly divergent cast of characters. Despite its many virtues, this is probably Fforde's weakest novel, lacking the literary sophistication of the Thursday Next books. But Prebble's performance easily makes this Fforde's best audiobook to date. Prebble's vibrant, all-star narration more than makes up for them. Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover (Reviews, June 6). (July) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information. - Publishers Weekly It's tough being a detective in the unglamorous world of nursery rhyme crimes, especially when your power-hungry rival hogs the limelight, your commanding officer is looking to eliminate your division, and you have a nasty reputation for killing giants. Detective Inspector Jack Spratt is investigating the violent death of Humpty Dumpty, disreputable philanthropist and business mastermind, who may have been shot by his ex-wife. As Spratt and his ambitious assistant Mary Mary delve into the crime, they uncover several suspects and a sinister plot involving money laundering, woodcutters, and podiatry. Like Fforde's Tuesday Next series, The Big Over Easy is set in an alternative world where fiction is real-a place where Georgy Porgy is a crime boss, the Three Little Pigs are prosecuted for killing the Wolf, and Wee Willy Winkie has been diagnosed with narcolepsy. Full of allusions and puns on detective fiction and nursery rhymes, Fforde's fifth novel and first in a new series is good fun for all fiction collections. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/05.]-Devon Thomas, Hass MS&L, Ann Arbor, MI Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information. - Library Journal Humpty Dumpty fell off his wall, and the Nursery Crimes Division opened an investigation. Welcome to the beginning of a whole new wave of mysteries soon to be thickening bookstore shelves everywhere, because if Fforde (The Well of Lost Plots, 2003, etc.) knows one thing, it's that for every bit of innovation you must give the audience at least another of cliche. Nursery rhymes have come to life in his latest, but the crimes are just as grotesquely complex, the press as vainglorious, the coppers divided between greedy attention-seekers and humble head-down heroes, as in the real world. The Reading police department is unnaturally enamored with DCI Friedland Chymes, who not only always gets his man but is also able to solve crimes in a snappy yet dramatic fashion that makes fantastic copy when he writes them up for the magazines. Jack Spratt, stuck over in NCD (Nursery Crimes Division), has hardly the reputation of Friedland-there's that awkward business of bungling the Three Little Pigs case-and Spratt's newest problem is the untimely death of one very large egg. Humpty Dumpty just loved to sit on his wall, but he's been done in in a rather nasty fashion. With a scrappy new partner at his side (if she's good enough, she might soon push for a promotion to Official Sidekick), Spratt digs into Humpty's messy life: the divorce, the dozens upon dozens of ex-girlfriends and jilted lovers, the poorly thought-out investment schemes, etc. Fforde lays on his erudition with a trowel, slathering literary references all over his rote detective story. Of course, it being rote is part of the point, as Fforde's trying to deconstruct the whole genre. While the effect is at first hilarious and ingenious,eventually the charm wears off. Shallow and snarky, though the concept is clever. - Kirkus Reviews A wonderfully readable riot . . . [A] cleverly plotted, magically overstuffed yet amazingly digestible book . . . This summer's perfect beach read for eggheads. --The Wall Street Journal As if the Marx brothers were let loose in the children's section of a strange bookstore. --USA Today Pythonesque . . . Like the Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket books, this one is abundantly playful without being truly geared for children. Anyone who has ever been read a nursery rhyme . . . can appreciate Mr. Fforde's outlandish joking. --Janet Maslin, The New York Times - From the Publisher Humpty Dumpty falls to his death. DI Jack Spratt and his new partner DS Mary Mary, of the Nursery Crimes Division, are called to investigate. It seems Hump was an unsavory egg, and murder suspects include cuckolded husbands, jilted lovers, ex-wives, and sleazy business partners. Golden Voiced Simon Prebble delivers this NOIR nursery-spoof-police-procedural with Python-esque deadpan. His characterizations are inspired bits of insanity, including witnesses Willie Winkie, who suffers from narcolepsy, and Mrs. Hubbard, whose poor dogs never get any bones. Anagrams, puns, palindromes, and allusions run riot in this laugh-out-loud tomfoolery. Prebble's delicious performance adds just the right spice to Jasper Fforde's fluffy omelette. For listeners who like their silliness literate, with a twist. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine - APR/MAY 06 - AudioFile