Jasper Fforde does it again with a dazzling new series starring Inspector Jack Spratt, head of the Nursery Crime Division
Jasper Ff... read full description
Jasper Ff... read full description
reviews
Nov 30, 2011
Stephen
rated it: 
Was it an EGGcident…or cold-yoked murder?
When Humpty Dumpty, local businessman and infamous lothario, is found dead beneath a wall outside his Grimm’s Road apartment, Detective Jack Spratt of the Reading (pronounced Redding) Nursery Crime Division (NCD) is called in to investigate. Jack is a smart, capable, no-fat eating investigator whose previous collars include the apprehensions of (i) serial wife-killer, Bluebeard, (ii) psychotic mass-murderer, The Gingerbread Man and (iii) a More...
When Humpty Dumpty, local businessman and infamous lothario, is found dead beneath a wall outside his Grimm’s Road apartment, Detective Jack Spratt of the Reading (pronounced Redding) Nursery Crime Division (NCD) is called in to investigate. Jack is a smart, capable, no-fat eating investigator whose previous collars include the apprehensions of (i) serial wife-killer, Bluebeard, (ii) psychotic mass-murderer, The Gingerbread Man and (iii) a More...
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Dec 17, 2009
oriana
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Jasper Fforde is just so much fun. His books are sorta like beach reads for book nerds. They're playful, punny, funny, silly, and smart. Also I saw him read in a small bookstore in SoHo a couple of years ago and he is hilarious. He talked about how he and his kids play games in supermarkets where they put really incongruous and semi-embarrasing things in other people's shopping carts (I think he called them 'trolleys' because of course he British or maybe Austrailian?), like adult diapers for y
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Jan 21, 2009
Glenna
rated it:
A cleverly written book about the death of Humpty Dumpty and the detectives Jack Sprat and Mary Mary who are on the case. Many references are made to nursery rhyme characters. This author has another series and the first book is "The Eyre Affair" that has something to do with Jane Eyre being kidnapped.
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May 19, 2008
Sfdreams
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I read this book while waiting for the second Thursday Next novel to be available at the library.
Like the Thursday Next novels, Fforde presents a world where fiction blends with reality. In the Nursery Crime novels, nursery rhyme characters are "real", and there is a division of the police that deals specifically with crimes involving nursery characters.
In this first book of a series, Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and shattered into bits. Was he pushed? Was it More...
Like the Thursday Next novels, Fforde presents a world where fiction blends with reality. In the Nursery Crime novels, nursery rhyme characters are "real", and there is a division of the police that deals specifically with crimes involving nursery characters.
In this first book of a series, Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and shattered into bits. Was he pushed? Was it More...
Jul 15, 2008
Miss Purl
rated it: 
07/15: Finished it today. So damn funny, if you like puns and referential literary humor and British mysteries. Simultaneously a romp (yes, a romp!) through nursery rhymes and fairy tales, while sending up the ridiculousness of both old-school murder mysteries and modern-day police procedurals. Recommended to anyone who likes mysteries and fairy tales. Will definitely be checking out the next one from the library in short order.
07/14: Halfway through. Can't wait to finish. If More...
07/14: Halfway through. Can't wait to finish. If More...
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Jul 14, 2008
Rebecca
rated it: 
This was hard for me to love at first. I knew it was trying to be funny, but I kept taking it too seriously. Previous to chapter 16 I was prepared to write this review: "Didn't like it as much as I wanted to." After my husband explained the nursery rhyme that was meant to be the heading to chapter 19, I lightened up and found myself laughing as I had hoped at the beginning. It's a bit like a Monty Python movie... or Zoolander... the first time it just seems like stupidity... but th
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Dec 16, 2009
Maria
rated it:
Amazon calls this "probably Fforde's weakest novel" - a statement I must say I highly disagree with. It's much better than Lost in a Good Book and almost on par with The Eyre Affair - something which I thought absolutely impossible.
I love how Fforde dares to use the media to get his point across and how he plays around with commonly known concepts and stories without ever blatantly showing his readers "This is what I'm talking about, I'm so obvious you have to get it n More...
I love how Fforde dares to use the media to get his point across and how he plays around with commonly known concepts and stories without ever blatantly showing his readers "This is what I'm talking about, I'm so obvious you have to get it n More...
Feb 24, 2009
Samantha
rated it:
Outstanding! This may be my next book club recommendation. Being a mom of a toddler makes it even more amusing - especially when reading Mother Goose before bedtime. I normally avoid mysteries but I highly recommend this one.
Despite the dry and everpresent humor, it still wasn't hard to come up with my favorite paragraph:
Despite the dry and everpresent humor, it still wasn't hard to come up with my favorite paragraph:
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ALIENS BORING, REPORT SHOWS
An official report confirms what most of us have already suspected: that the alien visitors who arri
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Jan 18, 2009
Brendan
rated it:
I read this book several years ago, and so don’t have a lot to say about it today. I reread it as part of my book club, but in the intervening years, the distance gave me some perspective that let me recognize or enjoy a few more jokes:
* Charles Pewter, of The Diary of an Ordinary Man shows up in the book, with a couple funny jokes about his house.
* I’ve come to appreciate the vast number of goofs on the genre that Fforde perpetrates. I still particularly like the att More...
* Charles Pewter, of The Diary of an Ordinary Man shows up in the book, with a couple funny jokes about his house.
* I’ve come to appreciate the vast number of goofs on the genre that Fforde perpetrates. I still particularly like the att More...
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Jun 11, 2011
Julia
rated it:
I didn't like this nearly as much as the Thursday Next series (one of my favorite series of all time), but it was still a funny, entertaining, whimsical read. Humpty Dumpty has been murdered, and detectives Jack Spratt and Mary Mary are on the case in a world inhabited by nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters-- lots of absurdity and humor and hard-boiled detective work.
There are two main reasons why I think this book doesn't grab me the way The Eyre Affair and its sequels did.
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There are two main reasons why I think this book doesn't grab me the way The Eyre Affair and its sequels did.
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May 30, 2011
Sarah
rated it:
Once again, I can’t recommend Fforde as an author highly enough. He has a wonderful way with both characters and words – not to mention his gift at working in literary allusion. I had a hard time keeping up with all the nursery rhyme references, and I made my mom read them to me every night and had grandparents that recited them to me constantly! (Along with verses about the wages of sin…) I must warn you, however, these are not spin offs from the Thursday Next series. Spratt and Mary are comple
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Apr 05, 2011
Jennifer
rated it:
5 Things To Know Before Reading This Book
1. It is a murder mystery.
2. The victim is an enormous egg named Humpty Dumpty. (He fell off a wall … or was pushed or possibly shot.)
3. The detective investigating the crime is named Jack Spratt. His partner is Mary Mary.
4. Jack and Mary work for the Nursery Crimes Division (NCD).
5. You should brush up on your nursery rhymes and fairy tales before reading so as to fully enjoy the book. (It took me almost halfway through to d More...
1. It is a murder mystery.
2. The victim is an enormous egg named Humpty Dumpty. (He fell off a wall … or was pushed or possibly shot.)
3. The detective investigating the crime is named Jack Spratt. His partner is Mary Mary.
4. Jack and Mary work for the Nursery Crimes Division (NCD).
5. You should brush up on your nursery rhymes and fairy tales before reading so as to fully enjoy the book. (It took me almost halfway through to d More...
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Jan 26, 2011
Melissa
rated it:
I started out thinking this book was incredibly cheesy. I had heard it was funny, witty, and clever but the first couple chapters just didn't hold my attention. However, I'm glad I persevered because it ended up being a charming book.
Jack Spratt is the lead detective of the Nursery Crimes Division of the Reading police. While not as laudable as his colleagues in the regular division who are all a part of the Detectives guild, he nonetheless enjoys his job and does it to the best of his More...
Jack Spratt is the lead detective of the Nursery Crimes Division of the Reading police. While not as laudable as his colleagues in the regular division who are all a part of the Detectives guild, he nonetheless enjoys his job and does it to the best of his More...
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Jan 12, 2011
Lis
rated it:
In case you were worried: No, Jasper Fforde has not run out of weird, twisted things to do to defenseless Literature.
Jack Spratt, his second wife, and their five children (two his, two hers, one theirs) are living happily in Reading, England. Well, reasonably happily. Jack, a policeman, has the dubious honor of being the head of the Nursery Crimes unit. He and his tiny unit believe in the importance of their jobs, but no one else does. And they've just experienced the embarrassing, and More...
Jack Spratt, his second wife, and their five children (two his, two hers, one theirs) are living happily in Reading, England. Well, reasonably happily. Jack, a policeman, has the dubious honor of being the head of the Nursery Crimes unit. He and his tiny unit believe in the importance of their jobs, but no one else does. And they've just experienced the embarrassing, and More...
Aug 03, 2010
Rowland
rated it:
In The Big Over Easy Jasper Fforde introduces another slightly skewed (and book-based) world. Detective Inspector John Reginald ("Jack") Spratt works in the Nursery Crime Division, and while some of the fundamentals remain the same, policing is a bit different in Fforde's universe. As Superintendent Briggs explains to Spratt's new assistant, Mary Mary:
Modern policing isn't just about catching criminals, Mary. It's about good copy and ensuring that cases can be made into top More...
Modern policing isn't just about catching criminals, Mary. It's about good copy and ensuring that cases can be made into top More...
Jun 25, 2010
Lady
rated it:
Jasper Fforde is a comic literary genius! I love all of his books and have re-read them into tatters. His ideas are unique and he has the right balance between laugh-out-loud funny, guawfing, chuckling, and sniggering. It is perfect!
Jack Spratt is an overworked, underpaid police detective. He runs the Nursery Crime Division of the Reading Police Department on no budget and with as little help as Briggs can give him. He is also the loving father of five, happily married, and happens t More...
Jack Spratt is an overworked, underpaid police detective. He runs the Nursery Crime Division of the Reading Police Department on no budget and with as little help as Briggs can give him. He is also the loving father of five, happily married, and happens t More...
Jun 10, 2010
Kathleen
rated it:
A little like Terry Pratchett for detective novel enthusiasts. I'm so happy I've found this author! In this first book of the "Nursery Crime" series, Detective Jack Spratt is assigned to look into the untimely death of Humpty Dumpty. After coming off an unsuccessful prosecution of the three little pigs for the first-degree murder of Mr. Wolff (by vicious, premeditated boiling), Spratt is depressed and harried. His job heading up the underfunded and woefully understaffed Nursery Cri
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Jun 04, 2010
Ruth
rated it:
386 pages.
Fract5ured fairy tales, with real people wandering around in them. What a hoot.
"Meet Detective Inspector Jack Spratt, family man and head of the Nursery Crime Division, long suffering under the shadow of the flashy Detective Friedland Chymes with his astonishing number of published cases in Amazing Crime Stories. Spratt is fresh from a spectacular failure to see convicted three wily pigs for the murder of a certain wolf. The media and tide of public opinion More...
Fract5ured fairy tales, with real people wandering around in them. What a hoot.
"Meet Detective Inspector Jack Spratt, family man and head of the Nursery Crime Division, long suffering under the shadow of the flashy Detective Friedland Chymes with his astonishing number of published cases in Amazing Crime Stories. Spratt is fresh from a spectacular failure to see convicted three wily pigs for the murder of a certain wolf. The media and tide of public opinion More...
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Mar 08, 2010
Stef
rated it:
Very fun and great ending! Keeps you guessing!
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, and, well, you know the rest. But was Humpty's fall an accident, or was it murder? It's up to Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division to get to the bottom of it.
Jack has been very unlucky to be working in the shadow of popular Detective Friedland Chymes, and has just spectacularly lost a major case where the murderous three little pigs got off the hook for the death of the unfortunate Big Bad Wol More...
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, and, well, you know the rest. But was Humpty's fall an accident, or was it murder? It's up to Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division to get to the bottom of it.
Jack has been very unlucky to be working in the shadow of popular Detective Friedland Chymes, and has just spectacularly lost a major case where the murderous three little pigs got off the hook for the death of the unfortunate Big Bad Wol More...
Oct 28, 2009
Pam
rated it:
There are dead end jobs and then there’s The Dead End Job. Years ago, the city of Reading’s Nursery Crime (yes, you read that right) Division was headed by the a more successful sleuth than Jack Spratt. Unfortunately, he’s just lost one case too many (it turns out that those three murderous pigs were a jury favorite while the vegetarian wolf failed to overcome public stereotyping) and it looks like, not only his job but his whole division, is headed for early retirement. It’s not that Jack is a
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Sep 16, 2009
Ian
rated it:
As a fan of sci-fi and fantasy novels, I thought this would be a fun, easy read. A cross between an american screen noir detective mystery and.... and... what?
The characters come straight from nursery rhymes, but with the twist that they have a life, in Reading, beyond the rhyme descriptions. The hero (Det.Ins. Jack Spratt) and heroine (Side-kick Sgt. Mary Mary) are believable and admirable.
The premise is that someone murdered Humpty Dumpty as he slept, drunk, on his favourite wall. More...
The characters come straight from nursery rhymes, but with the twist that they have a life, in Reading, beyond the rhyme descriptions. The hero (Det.Ins. Jack Spratt) and heroine (Side-kick Sgt. Mary Mary) are believable and admirable.
The premise is that someone murdered Humpty Dumpty as he slept, drunk, on his favourite wall. More...
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Jun 11, 2009
Annette
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"The Big Over Easy" is first and foremost a mystery novel, or at least a sendup of one. Most mysteries now-days have a "hook" - horse racing, mysteriously prescient cats, and catering, just to name a few - and "Over Easy's" is - as the series name implies - Nursery Rhymes. As in the author's "Thursday Next" series, the attempt is to create a world in which literature, with all its tropes and memes and plot devices, is literally true. The action takes pla
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Jan 09, 2012
Alytha
rated it:
The Big Over Easy, thee first of the Nursery Crimes books, set in a fictional world within the fictional world of the Thursday Next books. As such, this world has experienced immigration of Nusery Rhyme characters, aliens and other weird things.
I hadn't read this one before, because I think I was afraid it would be childish, which it really isn't. I'll just put my entire trust in Fforde now and read every single word he publishes. The man is a crazy genius, and this book contains all t More...
I hadn't read this one before, because I think I was afraid it would be childish, which it really isn't. I'll just put my entire trust in Fforde now and read every single word he publishes. The man is a crazy genius, and this book contains all t More...
Jan 06, 2010
Merand
rated it:
My library recently featured a display of books that were fairy tales for adults - taking our childhood fairy tales and writing them for adult audiences or putting modern spins on them. I love these types of books and have read many in this vein. The Big Over Easy caught my eye. It looked like a fun spin on nursery rhymes, a humorous, light-hearted book (the only problem with grownup fairy tales is that they sometimes tend to the dark side). I picked it up, read through it quickly, and disco
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Feb 11, 2012
Leah
rated it:
A great book. As one of the the (many, many) quotes of praise say on its front cover, not only is it funny and clever, but works extremely well as a whodunnit, too.
Only very occasionally did I get tired of the farcical comedic aspect, and that mostly when he was trying to be clever in a non-nursery-rhyme setting (names that sound like other names, for instance, an unpleasant device that I now associate with Jeff Noon). In general, the nursery rhyme theme was deftly handled, each charac More...
Only very occasionally did I get tired of the farcical comedic aspect, and that mostly when he was trying to be clever in a non-nursery-rhyme setting (names that sound like other names, for instance, an unpleasant device that I now associate with Jeff Noon). In general, the nursery rhyme theme was deftly handled, each charac More...
Jul 20, 2010
Violet
rated it:
Well, it was definitely a book packed full of literary references that's for sure. In this world were not to bright aliens, fairy tales, nursery rhymes, Greek myths, Sherlock Holmes, and more are real. This world is freaking insane! And very funny.
There were TONS of literary references and clichés in this book. It was stuffed full of the stuff, of which I mostly got (I'm sad to say that there were some that I didn't know anything about, so there really are even more than know of). Th More...
There were TONS of literary references and clichés in this book. It was stuffed full of the stuff, of which I mostly got (I'm sad to say that there were some that I didn't know anything about, so there really are even more than know of). Th More...
Mar 19, 2010
Marfita
rated it:
This book is too much fun. It's not only a mystery, but a send-up of the form and, as a fan, this just tickles me to death. Jack Spratt is head of the Nursery Crimes Division of the Reading (ha ha - but this is so hard to pronounce correctly in my head when ... reading) CID. Expect familiar characters from poem and story, but fully rounded (so to speak). Criminal investigations are ruled by the Guild of Detectives, populated by the self-aggrandizing literary detectives and their toadying offi
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Jan 24, 2011
Mandolin
rated it:
Fforde, Jasper
Mystery
Summary and my thoughts: Reeling from a failed conviction of the three little pigs in their boiling alive of Mr. Fox, Jack Spratt of Reading’s Nursery Crime Division (who eats no fat and whose first wife died of obesity-related complications) is faced with a new case and an ultimatum from his chief: solve it quick and your department won’t be disbanded. Unfortunately, the case that at first seemed straightforward (Humpty Dumpty, who loved to sit on walls, More...
Mystery
Summary and my thoughts: Reeling from a failed conviction of the three little pigs in their boiling alive of Mr. Fox, Jack Spratt of Reading’s Nursery Crime Division (who eats no fat and whose first wife died of obesity-related complications) is faced with a new case and an ultimatum from his chief: solve it quick and your department won’t be disbanded. Unfortunately, the case that at first seemed straightforward (Humpty Dumpty, who loved to sit on walls, More...
Mar 26, 2011
Carol
rated it:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, and, well, you know the rest. But was Humpty's fall an accident, or was it murder? It's up to Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division to get to the bottom of it. With the Department about to be shut down due to budget cuts, Jack gets new hope with the arrival of a contrary new partner, Sergeant Mary Mary and the messy death of Humperdinck Jehoshaphat Aloyius Stuyvesant van Dumpty, a.k.a. Humpty Dumpty.
As the book works its convoluted way to a grand an More...
As the book works its convoluted way to a grand an More...
