Astonishingly, he stays funny for 400 pages (and this is only the first in the Nursery Crime Division trilogy).

'Fforde offers a cascade of puns, plays on words, surrealism, satire and verbal virtuosity based on children’s rhymes and stories.

The Big Over Easy is great not just because it's very funny (albeit with some excruciating puns) but also because it works properly as a whodunit.' - Peter Guttridge, The Observer (.) (T)he funniest parts of The Big Over Easy are its sendups of mystery fiction protocol.' - Janet Maslin, The New York Times

'(T)he treat in reading him lies in realizing that there's nothing he won't try.

But like the best novels of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, Fforde goes beyond his genre' - Paula L. ' The Big Over Easy is so full of nursery rhyme references, puns and literary asides (not to mention the occasional ad and illustration) that it's hard not to laugh out loud while reading this fantastical sendup of a police procedural.(.) A real summertime treat.' - Christina Hardyment, The Independent They also have more twists and turns than Christie, and are embellished with the rich detail of a Dickens or Pratchett. They have empathetic heroes and heroines who nearly make terrible mistakes and suitably dastardly villains who do. They are written with buoyant zest and are tautly plotted. 'Fforde's books are more than an ingenious idea.Apparently written in 1993/4, The Big Over Easy was only published in 2005.General information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author 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.Īnd on top of all that, the Jellyman is coming to town.Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs. All the evidence points to his ex-wife, who has conveniently shot herself.īut Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his assistant Mary Mary remain unconvinced, a sentiment not shared with their superiors at the Reading Police Department, who are still smarting over their failure to convict the Three Pigs of murdering Mr.

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. It’s Easter in Reading - a bad time for eggs - and no one can remember the last sunny day. The Fourth Bear From the publisher description:

The big over easy book