Customer Reviews

The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime (Jack Spratt Investigates)

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's very hard for any author to be funny, and to stay funny for the length of a whole novel... much less for an ongoing series. Fforde achieves it by always having a clear sense of where he's going, even when the plot appears to have as little structure as a Marx Brothers movie or a Monty Python skit. Or, should I say, as little *apparent* structure.

The plots may be a little on the strange side -- we're talking here about a storyline based on the search for Goldilocks, which encompasses competitive cucumbers, the secret morals of the Easter Bunny, porridge allotments for bears, and a space alien who talks in binary -- but the characters become real people (or, uh, bears). You care about them, and before you know it, you _really_ want to know who is behind all of the intertwined events.

But mostly, Fforde is extremely funny. He never descends into dumbness or predictability, and just when you think he's set you up for one verbal pratfall, he takes the story in a wholly unexpected direction.

You *could* read this book without first reading the first in the Nursery Crime series; the story does stand on its own. However, I think you'll enjoy this one more if you read the earlier book first.

In either case, though -- this is a marvelous romp. Highly recommended for carbon-based life forms who wish a reason to laugh.

Nursery Crimes detective Jack Spratt is back on the case in The Fourth Bear, and it's a much better book than the first one (The Big Over Easy). I really enjoyed the first book, but found myself not laughing as much as I would have liked. The second, however, solves that problem. There were many instances where I laughed for a while, enjoying Fforde's turn of phrase or a new concept. Virtually every one of my complaints from the first book disappeared as Fforde appears to have dropped them, or at least sidelined them. And the end of the book is even better, with the announcement that not only is Jack Spratt returning, but a new Thursday Next novel is coming out next year too!

The glory from Detective Spratt's solving of the Humpty Dumpty murder doesn't last long, especially after a series of mishaps in subsequent cases, such as the Red Riding Hood case, where unfortunately a few people were eaten by the wolf before the case was solved. But Spratt has more important things to worry about now. The sinister psychopath, The Gingerbread Man, has escaped from the mental asylum that Jack put him into twenty years ago, and he's going on a rampage. But Jack's not in charge of the investigation, having been ordered to take a psych evaluation. Instead, he follows up on the death of a reporter named Goldilocks, a friend to the huge bear population living in the area. After a gruesome discovery, Spratt and his partner, Mary Mary, move to uncover a sinister plot that may go extremely high up. But why does Jack keep happening upon the Gingerbread Man, and why does he leave Jack alive every time? Is he a cookie or a cake? And what do the intricacies of bear society, the illegal trafficking in black market porridge, and a theme park based on the Battle of the Somme have to do with each other? Jack may not survive to find out.

Fforde demonstrates his mastery of the absurd in The Fourth Bear, piling on the situations and incorporating multiple nursery rhymes and children's stories into an intricate tapestry that holds together remarkably well. He also moves the characters forward, dispensing with situations that were already dealt with in The Big Over Easy. Friedland Chymes, Jack's rival on the force, is gone (I figured he'd be back for the second novel). There is hardly a mention of the "the more famous and published a detective you are, the more likely you are to get a guilty verdict" idea that was prominent in the first book. These omissions strengthen the book, as the inclusion of either one would have dragged it down a bit. The publication idea was amusing throughout the first book, but I think that concept was worn out.

So what does The Fourth Bear have going for it? It still has the strong characterization of all the regulars. Jack is a very interesting character, quick of wit, slightly insane (you'd have to be to deal with the types of crimes the Nursery Crimes division does), and he has a few personal problems to deal with as well. Mary Mary is also wonderfully done, hitting it off with the alien Nursery Crimes officer and exposing a more personal side to her character. The other characters in the books are great too, with Fforde giving them just as much depth as they need to leap off the page. The various bears, the Gingerbread Man (wonderfully psychotic with a wit to match), the cops, even the incidental characters, almost all of them are fun to read about.

What make every Fforde book worth reading, however, are the concepts that he comes up with. The introduction to the book has a set piece in a village with the most well-behaved children in the country, because it's a village where the childhood warnings literally come true ("if you suck your thumb, the Scissor-Man will come and cut your thumb off"). Jack and the Nursery Crimes division have to trap the Scissor-Man, using a local family as bait. There are also the convoluted ways that bear society works, which Fforde manages to make perfectly understandable and which are also instrumental in figuring out what happened to Goldilocks. I loved the way that porridge is controlled because of what it does to bears, and what they often do to get more than their monthly quota. All of the chapter headings are entries in the "Bumper Book of Berkshire Records, 2004 edition," and most of them are hilarious as well.

Despite the weirdness, though, everything hangs together beautifully, resulting in a world that is coherent (if strange) and everything makes a weird sort of sense. Nursery rhyme and children's story characters can live and work amongst the populace, bears are the new minority with the government trying to protect them (a bill was recently tabled but voted down, called "The Right to Arm Bears").

There was only one real problem with the book, and that was the resolution of Jack's personal problems. It was a little too quick, and while it resulted in a funny turn on the whole "Punch and Judy" phenomenon (Punch and Judy are Jack's new neighbours, and they fight and make up constantly, fitting their roles from the popular stage show, but the book gives them a nice little twist at the end. Unfortunately, it's the only really good part of the resolution.

The Fourth Bear is hilarious novel, much better than The Big Over Easy. If you enjoyed that one, then you will really love this one. Fforde's let his imagination run wild again, and I loved the results. I'm anxiously awaiting the next ones.

David Roy

Who'd have thought that those old nursery rhymes and fairy tales would have had so much going on behind the scenes? Fresh from their largely forgotten triumphs in "The Big Over Easy", Jack Spratt, Mary Mary and the rest of the Nursery Crime Division find themselves faced with new challenges.

The psychopathic killer known as the Gingerbread Man is loose, and true to his legend, he runs as fast as he can and you just can't catch him. Added to that, prize cucumbers are disappearing, mysterious explosions are vaporising chucks of real estate, Goldilocks is missing, and relationships with the bears are about to boil over due to porridge control issues.

Officially, Jack is off the case and in disgrace, and although Mary Mary takes over for a while, she is also busted on an overexposure charge. The Gingerbread Man case is given to David Copperfield, and there are no great expectations for solving it, but then again, you can't keep a good fictional character down for long.

If you thought that the DaVinci Code was startling, there are also many revelations in this book - a must-read if you want to know why the three bowls of porridge were at different temperatures, if gingerbread is a cake or a cookie, and why deals from used car salesmen are often too good to be true.


Amanda Richards, August 20, 2006

This is the second in Jasper Fforde's series about Inspector Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crimes Division (first encountered in The Big Over Easy). Although the success of the Humpty Dumpty investigation has made made Spratt a hero, his reputation is tarnished by his failure to prevent Red Riding Hood and her Granny being eaten by the wolf (not to mention getting swallowed himself), and much to his disgust, he is not put in charge of the investigation when the Gingerbreadman, a psycopathic killer, escapes and goes on the rampage. There is also the problem of the disappearance of the investigative journalist known as Goldilocks, last seen alive at the house of the Three Bears, and sinister goings-on in the competitive world of cucumber growing. Spratt also has personal problems to deal with, like choosing the right moment to reveal to his wife that he is a PDR (person of dubious reality), and the marriage of his daughter Pandora to the Titan Prometheus. Not to mention the continuing controversy over whether the Gingerbreadman is a biscuit or a cake (more crucial to the plot than you might think).

It has been said that Jasper Fforde is 'J.K. Rowling for grown-ups', but I think Fforde is much more like Lewis Carrol than he is like Rowling. This is the funniest of his books yet, I found myself laughing continuously, the plot is exciting as well as funny, and the character endearing, particularly Jack's assoicate Ashely, who happen to be an alien. If you have enjoyed his other books, you are sure to like this one, if you haven't read them, not just suspect disbelief and plunge in.

If you have not encountered Fforde before, run (do not walk) to the links above and pick up The Eyre Affair. A more erudite, funny, accessible, fun read can hardly be imagined. Eyre was the first in a series of books about his literary detective Thursday Next. The later Thursday books were good but not as great as Eyre, and were followed by The Big Over Easy, first of the Nursery Crime series. Over Easy was actually a much earlier book, one that Fforde apparently returned to after the first few Thursday Next books. It reads as if he did a partial rewrite, and the end result was pretty uneven.

I'm very happy to say that The Fourth Bear is very good - certainly better than Over Easy, and better than the later Thursday Next tales.

Spoiler-free plot synopsis: Police detective Jack Spratt is head of the Nursery Crimes division, specializing in crimes related to nursery-rhyme and childrens story characters. It seems that the famous homicidal maniac The Gingerbread Man has escaped from the asylum and has resumed his serial killer spree of years before. In the meantime, investigative reporter Golilocks has disappeared while investigating some cucumbers which seem to be exploding with great violence, and all the local bears have good alibis.

Injecting the characters of nursery rhyme and childrens stories into the real world gives Fforde the opportunity for some great jokes and situations, and he takes full and unfettered advantage of the situation to tell a very funny story. I learned things I never knew before about the risks of thumb-sucking, bear social structure, alien physiology, and an entirely new set of tongue-twisting rhymes that spin off of Peter Pipers pickles. Great fun all around, and the kind of thing that Fforde does better than almost anybody.

But what sets this book a step up for Fforde is the strength of the plot. This is a real and functional mystery, complete with red herrings, maguffins, nice subtleties, office politics, both venal and honest politicians, and a resolution that works perfectly with the rest of the story. If you were to strip it of its fantastic and humorous elements (and you could! (though you shouldn't)) there would still be an interesting mystery with interesting characters.

And really, you can't ask for much more than that.

At the start of the second Nursery Crime adventure, Jack Spratt and the Nursery Crime Division are experiencing an unaccustomed interval of official approval and public favor, after the successful resolution of the Humpty Dumpty murder.

Naturally, this can't last, and as a direct result of doing his job, Jack has been placed on medical leave. (He successfully captured the Big Bad Wolf--unfortunately after both Grandma and Little Red Riding Hood had been swallowed. He had to go in after them and rescue them, and they're now apparently catatonic.) Jack can't return to duty until he has a session with a psychiatrist and she pronounces him fit for duty. This has happened at an especially inconvenient time, because the Gingerbreadman, the vicious serial killer whose capture was the first big success of Jack's career, has escaped. Meanwhile, mysterious explosions are killing competitive cucumber growers, an old irritant, Josh Hatchett of The Toad, is asking for a favor--his sister is missing. His sister whose nickname is Goldilocks is missing--last seen fleeing the cabin of the Bruin family. Jack delves into the world of bear porridge smuggling, competitive cucumber growing, the new theme park, SommeWorld, being built by QuangTech to discourage romantic images of war, and a painful encounter with his own true nature (as a PDR--Person of Dubious Reality.) And of course, Caliban has taken up residence in his house, and Punch and Judy have moved in next door.

This is fast-paced, entertaining silliness--great fun, and excellent light reading for a hot summer weekend.

Recommended.

I loved it! I know if I listened again I would catch more of the jokes.

This series is so good, as soon as I saw it here I had to order it. Jasper Fforde is one of the funniest authors around. And I love listening to his books as opposed to reading them - which is ok too, but I like the person who reads them. As long as he writes them, I'll keep buying them!

So says Lord Henry Wotton in "The Picture of Dorian Gray." He is speaking of his wife, whom he meets occasionally, when they "dine out together, or go down to the Duke's," but he might as well have been speaking of Jasper Fforde. Lord Henry, alas, does not turn up in Fforde's "The Fourth Bear," but his protege, Dorian Gray, is on hand and quite appropriately employed as a used car salesman.

This is the second novel to feature Detective Chief Inspector Jack Spratt, the head of the understaffed, underbudgeted and chronically short-of-space Nursery Crime Division of the Reading Police Department. Once again, Spratt is ably assisted and sometimes abetted by Detective Sergeant Mary Mary [sic] and Detective Constable Ashley, a sitcom-loving, digitally-inclined space alien presently residing in Reading, some eighteen light years from his home world (not that it makes any real difference.)

Fforde is a member of a uniquely English band of eccentrics extending from the unknown poet of "Sir Gawayn and the Grene Kny3t" through Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Monty Python and Douglas Adams to Terry Pratchett. They all tell the most absurd stories with the most serious faces.

"The Fourth Bear" has a plot, quite a serviceable one, really (not that it makes any real difference.) The function of this plot is to allow the very clever author to ring the changes out of his initial postulate that a single world can contain competitive cucumber growers, pristine and unchanging automobiles which carry in their trunks--oops, in their boots, I mean--paintings of themselves that with time grow increasingly dinted, dinged, rusted, and clapped-out; a family of talking ursines who periodically leave their secluded cottage to perform ablutions in the woods; a homicidally-inclined seven-foot gingerbread man; a theme park that reproduces the light-hearted fun of a day amidst the Battle of the Somme; mysterious Men in Green and "Bizarre and unseemly experiments of a horticultural nature."

Fforde delights in co-opting nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters into his cast list, but he does not stop there. There is the aforementioned Mr. Gray, of course, and when Fforde needs sinister operatives for his super-sinister governmental security agency, he rips off a pair of the best: Mr. Demetrios, who owns, we can be certain, both a mask and a coffin; and his female associate, Danvers, whom we can safely assume was once married.

Fforde and Pratchett are today's leading practitioners of this kind of stuff. Pratchett is the better of the two. He is noticeably the more eloquent. If Pratchett's plots originate in the absurd, his development of them is adroit and competently novelistic. Fforde's prose, on the other hand, is competent and efficient, but no more. Fforde does not allow his plots the freedom provided by Pratchett. It's one fairy tale character after another, all of them running riffs on standard fairy tale plots, and on we go past the second star on the right and straight on `til morning.

If I had to choose between Pratchett and Fforde, I would take Pratchett every time. Fortunately, I don't have to make that choice. I am free to snatch the books of either one whenever I stumble upon them. And I do.

"The Fourth Bear" is a clever, amusing book. It is better than its predecessor in the series, "The Big Over Easy," but not a match for the books of the companion series featuring Thursday Next, in which the plots are less formula-bound.

Four pleasantly amused stars.

Jasper Fforde at his best, in this second installment in the quirky and offbeat adventures of DCI Jack Spratt, Mary Mary and Ashley.
Facing a physopatic Gingerbreadman with murder and gore on his mind, a suspension from his job (again!) and doubts as to his own reality, Jack must prove to the whole Nursery community that his department is worth the money.
And then there is Goldilock and the three bears. How exactly did the porridge managa to defy physics by cooling so eratically? Just who else was privy to the disaperance of the finicky Goldilocks?
Beware: this book is contagiously exciting, and may just get you interested in...cucumbers!