The Big Over Easy

[Nick Tarney]

This is a really odd book. It's about a world where police, instead of trying to catch criminals, are more focused on making documentaries about catching criminals. There is also a league where detectives compete to catch criminals. The main character is a person who films the documentaries. I haven't really read much of it so far, but it seems like a very odd topic. Apparently, Humpty Dumpty comes in somewhere later in the book, it'll be interesting to see how this book turns out, because I've never really read anything even close to it!

[Dusty Bibliophile]

I believe this story was a spin-off of Jack Spratt and his book from The Well of Lost Plots. Thursday Next took a sabbatical in Caversham Heights, an unpublished book in The Well of Lost Plots using the Character Exchange Program to give Mary Mary a vacation. Caversham Heights was a poorly written mystery book that was in danger of being demolished and the words being returned to the Word Sea for recycling. Thursday saved the book by designating it a Character Sancutary for oral tradition (such as nursery rhyme) story characters.

It seems this idea has changed some since the nursery rhyme characters are said to be unaware of their status as nursery rhyme characters. And since we are reading the "mystery story" we don't get to see the "behind the scenes" lives of the characters the way they were shown in The Well of Lost Plots. Many of the characters from Thursday's time in Caversham Heights show up and new ones, like Friedland Chymesm are added. And obvioulsy the book has a different title so I suppose we can't assume it would be identical to the Thursday Next experience. I can't help to wonder, though, just how intentionally detective-noir Fforde wrote the story. Some sections seem downright parodies of earlier famous mystery novels.