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Summary and Reviews of The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde

The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde

The Big Over Easy

A Nursery Crime

by Jasper Fforde
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  • First Published:
  • Jul 21, 2005, 400 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jul 2006, 400 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

It's Easter in Reading—a bad time for eggs. Ovoid D-class nursery celebrity, Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III, is found shattered to death. Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his assistant Mary Mary are on the case and before long find themselves grappling with a sinister plot involving cross-border money laundering, beanstalks, titans seeking asylum, and the cut and thrust world of international chiropody.

It's Easter in Reading—a bad time for eggs—and no one can remember the last sunny day. Ovoid D-class nursery celebrity Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III, minor baronet, ex-convict, and former millionaire philanthropist, is found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. All the evidence points to his ex-wife, who has conveniently shot herself.

But Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his assistant Mary Mary remain unconvinced, a sentiment not shared with their superiors at the Reading Police Department, who are still smarting over their failure to convict the Three Pigs of murdering Mr. Wolff. Before long Jack and Mary find themselves grappling with a sinister plot involving cross-border money laundering, bullion smuggling, problems with beanstalks, titans seeking asylum, and the cut and thrust world of international chiropody.

And on top of all that, the JellyMan is coming to town . . .

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Reviews

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If you've enjoyed the Thursday Next series and appreciate a little bit of 'silliness', then this might be for you, but if literary slapstick isn't your cup of tea, you should probably steer clear!..continued

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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

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Beyond the Book



Fforde's first book, The Eyre Affair, was published in 2001, and was followed by Lost In A Good Book (2002), The Well of Lost Plots (2003) and Something Rotten (2004). All revolve around, female detective, Thursday Next who lives in a parallel world to our own where books are paramount, the Crimean War is still ongoing and dodos are the pets of choice.

Fforde says that he felt the need to take a break and, to that end, resurrected the concept for a novel that he'd first written ...

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