The Fourth Bear [Import] [Hardcover]

Jasper Fforde (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Hodder & Staughton; hardcover edition (2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0340835710
• ISBN-13: 978-0340835715
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,060,753 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jasper Fforde traded a varied career in the film industry for staring vacantly out of the window and arranging words on a page. He lives and writes in Wales. The Eyre Affair was his first novel in the bestselling Thursday Next series. He is also the author of the Nursery Crime series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars May Contain Nuts, August 17, 2006

By 

Pseudonymous the Younger - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fourth Bear (Hardcover)

The Gingerbreadman, the arch villain in The Fourth Bear, is seven feet of vicious, manical. . . ah, cookie...(or perhaps cake)... who has escaped from an insane asylum, is having a great time tearing people's arms off, and has a grudge against Jack Spratt, the fatophobic hero of this nursery crime story.

Now perhaps you are a down-to-earth kind of person and think that swallowing a seven-foot-tall, crazy, anthropomorphic, ginja warrior, cereal-killer cookie as a villain would be difficult for you. But Jasper Fforde is a genius at taking seemingly absurd premises and turning them into stimulating, delicious tales filled with nutty goodness. The Fourth Bear, like Fforde's other tales, takes place in a world where fictional characters have lives outside of their books. In this case, the characters are from nursery rhymes and fairy tales, but don't worry, this is NOT a children's book. It is a hilarious spoof on TV and movie crime shows, complete with all your favorite crime story plot devices and chock full of delightful word play and literary references that will keep you laughing and your brain regular.

Goldilocks is dead. The Gingerbreadman is terrorizing Reading, UK. Giant cucumbers are mysteriously exploding. And to make matters worse, police detective Jack Spratt has been swallowed whole by the Big Bad Wolf. So what are you waiting for. Run, Run, Fast as you can...order your copy today!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Witty mayhem and murder among the Nursery Rhymes, August 6, 2006

By 

Ingrid Heyn "No man is an Iland, intire of it... (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fourth Bear (Hardcover)

If you've already read any of Jason Fforde's novels, you'll know (well, roughly) what to expect - witty turns of phrase, intriguing characters that are probably not quite sane, the concept of literary characters having a corporeality that makes them virtually as real as anyone else, tricky situations out of which the characters leap from one bizarre plot resolution to another (Jason Fforde actually numbers the possible plot devices used, and it works beautifully), and more in-jokes (nursery-rhyme related in this case) than would fit in a pie, even an extra-large pie.

Those who delight in witty literary puns will love Mr Fforde's style, as will devotees of Terry Pratchett's novels. There's something delightfully manic about the style here, and I was reminded occasionally of Lewis Carroll in the writing.

Briefly: Jack Spratt, detective in charge of the Nursery Crime Division (dealing with all crimes that are related to PDRs - Persons of Dubious Reality, such as characters from nursery rhymes, etc.) is not basking for long in the glow of success after having discovered the murderer of Humpty Dumpty (see The Big Over-Easy). His popularity in the press plummets down after his division fails to prevent the wolf from swallowing Granny and Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack's shunted off for an enforced "rest" period (with his sanity called into question) when the evil and sadistic psychotic murderer The Gingerbread Man escapes from the asylum.

But Jack won't let a little thing like that stop him. He and Mary Mary, along with the trusty help of binary-speaking alien, Ashley, are determined to pull a plot device and make Briggs (Jack's superior) look like an idiot by solving the case themselves. It's all to do with bears - and a missing journalist named Goldilocks - and an unexpected Swiftian secret that lies beneath the growing of super cucumbers. Oh, and Jack's newly purchased car, which seems to repair itself and whose odometer is running BACKWARDS...

It's all great fun and genuinely well plotted. I admit my review is biased - I've become addicted to Jason Fforde's novels.