The Big Over Easy
On sale
1st May 2009
Price: £8.99
‘It looks like he died from injuries sustained during a fall…’
Bestselling author Jasper Fforde begins an effervescent new series. ‘
It’s Easter in Reading – a bad time for eggs – and no one can remember the last sunny day. Humpty Dumpty, well-known nursery favourite, large egg, ex-convict and former millionaire philanthropist is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town.
Following the pathologist’s careful reconstruction of Humpty’s shell, Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his Sergeant Mary Mary are soon grappling with a sinister plot involving cross-border money laundering, the illegal Bearnaise sauce market, corporate politics and the cut and thrust world of international Chiropody.
As Jack and Mary stumble around the streets of Reading in Jack’s Lime Green Austin Allegro, the clues pile up, but Jack has his own problems to deal with. And on top of everything else, the JellyMan is coming to town…
Bestselling author Jasper Fforde begins an effervescent new series. ‘
It’s Easter in Reading – a bad time for eggs – and no one can remember the last sunny day. Humpty Dumpty, well-known nursery favourite, large egg, ex-convict and former millionaire philanthropist is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town.
Following the pathologist’s careful reconstruction of Humpty’s shell, Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his Sergeant Mary Mary are soon grappling with a sinister plot involving cross-border money laundering, the illegal Bearnaise sauce market, corporate politics and the cut and thrust world of international Chiropody.
As Jack and Mary stumble around the streets of Reading in Jack’s Lime Green Austin Allegro, the clues pile up, but Jack has his own problems to deal with. And on top of everything else, the JellyMan is coming to town…
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Reviews
This year's grown-up J K Rowling
I love it. THE BIG OVER EASY is great not just because it's very funny...but also because it works properly as a whodunit...Comic genius.
A riot of puns, in-jokes and literary allusions that Fforde carries off with aplomb
'Consistently clever'
'This is the first if best-selling Fforde's hilarious, absurd and utterly compelling new series of nursery crimes for adults.'
'Fforde offers a cascade of puns, plays on words, surrealism, satire and verbal virtuosity...Astonishingly, he stays funny for 400 pages'
'Fforde is a master entertainer, and a wordsmith of dexterous genius.'
'Jasper Fforde here mixes nursery rhymes with golden age detective fiction to produce something very accomplished indeed.'
'Fforde's books are more than an ingenious idea. They are written with buoyant zest and are tautly plotted. They have empathetic heroes and heroines who nearly make terribly mistakes and suitably dastardly villains who do. They also have more twists and turns than Christie, and are embellished with the rich details of a Dickens or Pratchett. As Humpty Dumpty's life-story is revealed, the mystery becomes curiouser and curiouser, and the compulsion to find out what is going on increases. A real treat.'
'There is no more familiar genre than the detective story. The problem is that the sleuth story is now so familiar that it's in serious danger of getting boring. What's to be done? Jasper Fforde has the answer. Once you open this book, you'll find it very hard to put down. I've never read anything like this. And I couldn't get enough'
'Fans of the late Douglas Adams or, even, Monty Python, will feel at home with Fforde'
'If you haven't read Jasper Fforde before, THE BIG OVER EASY, is likely to come as a surprise . . . the combination of fantasy and (more of less) classic murder makes a wild and enjoyable change'
'Clever plot lines, wit, and Fforde's unique humorous style ensures the reader is captivated from start to finish. A must for anyone wanting a light-hearted read in a class of its own.'
