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lightreads ([personal profile] lightreads) wrote2009-08-15 11:07 am

The Big Over Easy, The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde

The Big Over Easy (Nursery Crime, #1) The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A Thursday Next spin-off about Jack Spratt, chief of the Nursery Crime Division, with all the meta and absurdity you'd expect when the first book is about the murder of Humpty Dumpty (he fell off a wall, you know).

Fun, if a bit too breaking the fourth wall sometimes, which is also my problem with Thursday Next. And Fforde gets caught here in his own meta cleverness. He's deconstructing mysteries, so yes you make the repeated joke about the sidekick being boring and having no particular personality. Which is fine, except that she's boring and has no particular personality.

But the thing about Jasper Fforde is that no one else does what he does, and what he does is fundamentally cool.

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