Humpty Dumpty has had a big fall indeed, and it looks like foul play. So thinks Jack Spratt, the head of the under-staffed and under-funded Nursery Crimes Division of the Reading Police Department. Jack’s getting pressure to wind up the Humpty investigation quickly, in order to make up his recent debacle trying to convice the 3 pigs of pre-meditated murder of the wolf. But the Humpty investigation is raising more questions than answers, and Jack’s whole Nursery Crimes department is on the line.
I read several of Fforde’s Thursday Next series, and I really liked them. But (confession time) my knowledge of the classics is woefully inadequate, resulting in not getting a lot of the humor centered around Thursday. But nursery rhymes? I know those really well, and I loved Fforde’s unexpected treatment of the characters; the Big Bad Wolf was wronged and the Gingerbreadman is a psychopathic murderer.
I picked up the second in the series, The Fourth Bear, right after finishing The Big Over Easy and enjoyed it just as much. Sad to say though, that The Fourth Bear was published in 2006 and I don’t see another volume in this series on the horizon. Pick these up if you don’t mind being left with an unrequited desire for more!