...Blogmas

Welcome to Blogmas!

Every day from December the first until Christmas Eve I will accompany with one Christmas related post, giving you gift ideas, tips, recipes, etc. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy Coming up with posts and writing them.

Day 19 

 

Review

The Big Over Easy

by Jasper Fforde

  

First sentences:

It was the week following Easter in Reading and no one could remember the last sunny day.

Summary:

In The Big Over Easy, Fforde takes a break from classic literature and tumbles into the seedy underbelly of nursery crime. Meet Inspector Jack Spratt, family man and head of the Nursery Crime Division. He’s investigating the murder of ovoid D-class nursery celebrity Humpty Dumpty, found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. Yes, the big egg is down, and all those brittle pieces sitting in the morgue point to foul play.

source: Goodreads

My opinion: 

The Big Over Easy is the first book in The Nursery Crime series and it is a typical Jasper Fforde book – super funny, entertaining and a bit weird.

I always need a bit of time (about 30 pages) until I am fully in my, what I call, “surreal books reading phase”. Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde are the two authors where I need to get into the right mood to read the books. The Big Over Easy was everything I hoped for and a lot more.

The book mainly tells the story of the Nursery Crime Division of the Reading police department and their current case which in this book was the murder of Mr. Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III. I love reading mysteries (nothing cruel just the light ones) and I try to guess who was the murderer but there was no way to solve this particular mystery. We as readers always follow DI Jack Spratt and his new DS Mary Mary.

Both main characters are well portrayed and especially Jack is a highly amusing character. For me he was the perfect DI for the Nursery Crime Division. He is loyal to his team, always tries to safe the NCD from being cut but he has flaws too. His biggest must be that he killed four giants-well, only one; the other ones were just tall. Mary Mary is the new Sergeant in Reading and she hopes to be part of the team from famous Friedland Chimes but is partnered with Jack which annoys her tremendously. Still she does her best work and learns to love the NCD and the team working there.

If you like Terry Pratchett’s books you will like this one too. You cannot compare the two worlds or writing styles but from the level of absurdity (which should not be understood as bad) they are pretty similar.

The Books in the Nursery Crimes Adventures are:

• The Big Over Easy
• The Fourth Bear

For more information about Jasper Fforde visit his Homepage, his Facebook and Twitter pages.