The Big Over Easy
By Jasper Fforde,
Hodder & Stoughton, $195
Once upon a time, in a mind far removed from reality, an aspiring author dreamed up an alternative universe of glorious absurdity.
First, he brought us a series of hilarious novels involving a genre-jumping literary detective, Thursday Next. She inhabits a world in which real people interact with characters from books, where cloned dodos are popular pets and where typical pub gossip is about whether Shakespeare really did write all those plays.
Now, using a similar conceit, best-selling author Jasper Fforde has written The Big Over Easy, a crime thriller with a difference. He has turned his vivid imagination to nursery rhymes, or rather nursery crimes. And the story is really off the wall this time.
Humperdinck Jehoshaphat Aloysius Stuyvesant van Dumpty, a large egg, minor aristocrat and former convict, has been found dead, his body splattered beneath a wall in a rundown part of town. But was it suicide or murder? Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his contrary assistant Mary Mary are called in to investigate. They're already feeling the heat from their superiors because three pigs have just been cleared of murdering Mr Wolff. Meanwhile, Jack finds he has a large problem with a beanstalk.