First Among Sequels: Thursday Next Book 5 (The Thursday next series)

by Jasper Fforde

The year is 2002. It is fourteen years since Thursday almost pegged out at the 1988 Croquet SuperHoop, and life is beginning to get back to normal . . .

Salmon Thrusty’s intractable masterpiece The Demonic Couplets has had the first two chapters rebuilt six times, but the rest is relatively unscathed.’

/The Satanic Verses/, Salman Rushdie

After the usual Holmesian escapades, Watson follows Sherlock to the Reichenbach falls where he discovers that Holmes has apparently fallen to his death – and the book ends twenty-nine pages before it was meant to.’ There was a shocked silence as everyone took this in. We hadn’t had a textual anomaly of this size since Lucy Pevensie refused to get into the wardrobe at the beginning of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

The series had sacrificed characterisation over plot, and humour over action and pace. All atmosphere had evaporated, and the books were a parade of violent set-pieces interspersed with romantic interludes, and when I say ‘romantic’, I’m stretching the term. Most famous was her torrid affair with Edward Rochester and the stand-up cat fight with Jane Eyre. I had thought it couldn’t get any worse until Mrs Fairfax turned out to be a ninja assassin and Bertha Rochester was abducted by aliens. And all that was just in the first book.

I hadn’t the vaguest notion of how it worked, and was suspicious that perhaps there wasn’t an explanation at all – or indeed any need for one. It was something we called an ‘abstract narrative imperative’: it works solely because it’s expedient that it does so. The BookWorld is like that. Full of wholly improbable plot devices that are there to help grease the storytelling cogs.

I looked up. A confident middle-aged woman was standing next to the table. She had starburst wrinkles around the eyes and greying brown hair, a chickenpox scar above her left brow and asymmetric dimples. I raised an eyebrow. She was a well-realised character but I didn’t recognise her – at least, not at first. ‘Can I help?’ I asked. ‘I’m looking for the Jurisfiction agent named Thursday Next.’ ‘That’s me.’ Our visitor seemed relieved at this and allowed herself a smile. ‘Pleased to meet you. My name’s Dr Temperance Brennan.’

‘I don’t know anyone outside my books – except Kathy and Kerry of course.’

Said by Tempe Brennan.

Next in line is the thinker of the house and Mrs Bennet’s favourite: Lizzie, who is twenty.

Lizzie is Mr Bennet's favorite, not Mrs Bennet's. Typo?

‘Good thing too,’ replied Landen.‘It always made my head ache. In fact, I was thinking of doing a self-help book for SF novelists eager to write about time travel. It would consist of a single word: don’t.’

I started thinking of people who might want to kill me, but stopped counting when I reached sixty-seven.

suddenly, with a flash of realisation, I knew what was going on. Sherlock Holmes, Temperance Brennan, the Good Soldier Švejk and myself – kill us and you kill not just the individual, but the series. It seemed too bizarre to comprehend but it had to be the truth – there was a serial killer loose in the BookWorld.

My grateful thanks go to Kathy Reichs for allowing Dr Temperance Brennan to make a guest appearance in this book.