Fforde,Jasper. The Big Over Easy: Jack Spratt Investigates

This novel is the real first book (revised from its intial offering) by this Welsh writer who has found fame with his Thursday Next series. Not only is this a wonderful literate novel full of puns and acerbic play on words, it tickles your memory for those wonderful nursery rhymes we know so intimately. The mystery of who murdered Humpty Dumpty (ex-convict, former millionaire philanthropist & womanizer) and why is well-plotted and will appeal to any mystery lover of intricate plot, pacing, and personalities.

Jack Spratt is the head of the Nursery Crime division of the Reading Police Division who has suffered for a long time under the shadows of his previous partner, the flashy Detective Friedland Chymes, who has an astonishing number of his cases profiled in Amazing Crime Stories. For some reason he wants the Dumpty case and will do anything to get it. Jack's homelife is charming, his mother predictably eccentric, and his new sargeant Mary Mary has been demoted to Nursery Crimes after an altercation with her previous boss, and initally is not very happy about it, yearning to work with Chymes and the elite sidekicks of the Detective Guild.

Fforde is a master of wordsmithing, and he satirizes British detective fiction with a marvelous hearty guffaw, as well as creating memorable characters from nursery rhymes, myths, and childhood tales that we all remember. You will laugh out loud and return to past pages as the second or third layer of the joke becomes apparent to you in each chapter. One of funny themes running through the book has to do with Jack's attraction to beanstalks, and his proclivity for (accidentally) killing "giants." If you have not discovered Jasper Fforde, it is time to do so.

Leane M. Ellis, August 11, 2005