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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…
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
Consistently clever
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
A riot of puns, in-jokes and literary allusions that Fforde carries off with aplomb
Now humour is notoriously subjective so what I've just described might just sound plain daft to you. But I love it. THE BIG OVER EASY is great not just because it's very funny but also because it works properly as a whodunnit. Comic genius.
'More twists and turns than Christie ... embellished with the rich details of a Dickens or Pratchett. A real treat.'
'The combination of fantasy and a (more or less) classic murder . . . makes a wild and enjoyable change'
Very accomplished indeed.
'Fforde offers a cascade of puns, plays on words, surrealism, satire and verbal virtuosity based on children's rhymes and stories. Astonishingly, he stays funny for 400 pages . . . Even more amazingly, there's a real plot there, a proper mystery with a surprise solution'
'This is the first of best-selling Fforde's hilarious, absurd and utterly compelling new series'
'Fforde offers a cascade of puns, plays on words, surrealism, satire and verbal virtuosity...Astonishing, he is funny for 400 pages'
'Fforde's books are more than an ingenious idea. They are written with buoyant zest and tautly plotted. They have empathetic heroes and heroines who nearly make terrible mistakes and suitably dastardly villains who do. They also have more twists and turns than Christie, and are embellished with the rich detail of a Dickens or Pratchett . . . A summertime treat'
'The combination of fantasy and a (more or less) classic murder . . . makes a wild and enjoyable change'
'A triumphant lampoon of the whodunnit genre . . . Fforde manages to cram in more jokes per page than before, and the relish with which he takes to his subject is infectious'
'The first of best-selling Fforde's hilarious, absurd and utterly compelling new series'
'A book that should be more accessible to newcomers . . . Fforde may be an acquired taste, but it's worth acquiring'
'Continuing to ransack British fiction, Jasper Fforde here mixes nursery rhymes with golden age detective fiction to produce something very accomplished indeed'
'Fforde is a master entertainer, and a wordsmith of dexterous genius.'
