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Jasper Fforde

The Big over Easy Hardcover – July 1, 2005

by Jasper Fforde (Author)

683 ratings

Book 1 of 2: Nursery Crime Adventures

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It's Easter in Reading -- a bad time for eggs -- and no one can remember the last sunny day. Humpty Dumpty, well-known nursery favourite, large egg, ex-convict and former millionaire philanthropist is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. Following the pathologist's careful reconstruction of Humpty's shell, Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his Sergeant Mary Mary are soon grappling with a sinister plot involving cross-border money laundering, the illegal Bearnaise sauce market, corporate politics and the cut and thrust world of international Chiropody. As Jack and Mary stumble around the streets of Reading in Jack's Lime Green Austin Allegro, the clues pile up, but Jack has his own problems to deal with. And on top of everything else, the JellyMan is coming to town...

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date

July 1, 2005
Dimensions

5.35 x 1.5 x 8.03 inches
ISBN-10

0340835672
ISBN-13

978-0340835678
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hodder & Stoughton (July 1, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0340835672
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0340835678
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.35 x 1.5 x 8.03 inches

Customer Reviews:
683 ratings

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About the author

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Jasper Fforde

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Jasper Fforde is the critically acclaimed author of The Last Dragonslayer series: THE LAST DRAGONSLAYER, THE SONG OF THE QUARKBEAST and THE EYE OF ZOLTAR, SHADES OF GREY, the Nursery Crime books: THE BIG OVER EASY and THE FOURTH BEAR and the Thursday Next novels: THE EYRE AFFAIR, LOST IN A GOOD BOOK, THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS, SOMETHING ROTTEN, FIRST AMONG SEQUELS, ONE OF OUR THURSDAYS IS MISSING and THE WOMAN WHO DIED A LOT.

After giving up a varied career in the film world, he now lives and writes in Wales, and has a passion for aviation.

To find out more visit Jasper's website www.jasperfforde.com, Facebook page www.facebook.com/jasperffordebooks or follow him on Twitter @jasperfforde.

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3 star		10%
2 star		2%
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A clever concept that ultimately stumbles in the execution

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 20, 2007

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With his Thursday Next series, Jasper Fforde demonstrated to the world's readers that he possesses a remarkably fertile and ingenious imagination capable of delighting even such a linear thinker as me. In the Next world, it's a more or less contemporary UK, but one crazily askew from the one we know; 249 wooly mammoths in 9 herds roam the island, dodo birds are kept as pets, Tunbridge Wells has been ceded to Russia in Crimean War reparations, and there's a duty on custard.

In THE BIG OVER EASY, first of the Nursery Crime series, it's still apparently Thursday's England because her first literary adventure, The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel , has been turned into a film. However, in this fantasy novel, the hero isn't Thursday but Detective Inspector Jack Spratt, chief investigator of the beleaguered Nursery Crime Division of the Reading Police Department. Jack labors under a cloud; his arrest of the Three Pigs for the murder of the Big Bad Wolf failed to result in their conviction, and Spratt has the undeserved reputation as a Giant Killer. As he constantly takes great pains to explain to hecklers, there was only one true giant, the other three were just "tall".

Jack's time on the clock is currently monopolized with the investigation into Humpty-Dumpty's apparent murder off Grimm's Road as he sat on a wall. His new assistant is Detective Sergeant Mary Mary, recently transferred from Basingstoke. In the meantime, everyday life goes on; Little Bo-peep continues to report lost sheep, there's the occasional malicious rumor that the sky is falling, pied pipers are wont to arrive in town promoting pest eradication scams, "nail flavor" instant soup is all the rage, aliens continue to deny that they're abducting anybody, the Titan Prometheus, having escaped the shackles binding him to a rock in the Caucasus, is renting an extra room in the Spratt family abode, and Jack's Mom is amazed at the size of the beanstalk growing next to the potting shed.

Fforde has his protagonist take the murder enquiry seriously because, in Spratt's world, it's deadly serious business. As are Spratt's frustrated professional ambition, his backstabbing more famous rival, Detective Chief Inspector Friedland Chymes, and Jack's skirmish with the Independent Police Complaints Commission over the dismal Three Pigs affair. Not to mention the fact that Spratt suspects that Prometheus is seducing his 20-year old daughter, Pandora. Yet, it's the other-worldly eccentricity of the milieu that's certain to provide the reader with certain, if perhaps inconsistent, giddy pleasures. Indeed, Fforde works up such a froth of absurdity that the conclusion to THE BIG OVER EASY seemed, to this reader, especially contrived. It's almost as if the author had backed himself into a plot corner and had to take desperate measures to extricate himself and the book to get the latter off to the publisher in time. For that, I'm knocking off a star. But it won't stop me from ordering and relishing the next volume in the series, The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime .

2 people found this helpful

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Sean Curley

Mr. Fforde's marvelous little gem.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 6, 2008

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Jasper Fforde made his name in the literary world with his very popular "Thursday Next" series of books following the eponymous heroine on a series of fantastically convoluted adventures in the world of metafiction. There are some connections between the characters in this novel and characters who appeared as minor figures in one of the "Thursday Next" books, but the "Nursery Crime" series is a distinct animal, albeit though it plays with many of the same metafictional themes. "The Big Over Easy", the first entry in the new series, is a wonderful little book.

The basic story follows Jack Spratt, the head of Reading's Nursery Crime Division (NCD), who has worked for decades in what is considered a career dead-end (one step above the Ministry of Magic's Centaur Office, if you will), handling criminal acts involving nursery rhyme characters (he himself is one, though he doesn't know it, combining Jack Spratt, Jack the Giant-Killer, and Jack and the Beanstalk). He is joined by Mary Mary, a young Detective Sergeant who despairs at being put in the NCD, and really wants to work with Friedland Chymes, the celebrity detective whose adventures she grew up avidly following. The rest of the NCD crew includes a rookie assigned there for two months and then forgotten about, a hypochondriac, and an alien (yes, aliens have arrived, and, as documented in one of the fake newspaper clips included at the start of each chapter, were determined to not be very interesting). The case: the apparent slaying of Humpty Dumpty. The list of suspects is byzantine, and the plot has more contortions than the Gordian Knot, dragging in as incidental figures, among others, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer of Greek myth: he ends up renting a room in Jack's house and romancing his daughter Pandora (despite the 3980-year age difference).

The plot is ultimately not that important; Fforde wittily simultanteously employs and satirizes the various tropes of the genre (identical twins, red herrings, culprits who are only introduced toward the end), and the real fun of the book is in the numerous details (though the final resolution is quite fun; the sheer number of plots going on is itself a sort of parody of the standard detective story). Fforde has a dry, very British sense of humour in the vein of Monty Python and such. His depictions of the novel's world are endlessly entertaining; the book is marvelous fun to read. Each chapter begins with a quote from various in-universe sources, mainly newspapers, highlighting and parodying various fictional tropes. The other major theme in the book is Fforde's exploration of the idea of the celebrity detective; Watson loyally documented and published Holmes' exploits, but here we see this concept run amok: publictation has become as, if not more, important than actuall solving the case for many detectives, Chymes most of all. They actively conduct their investigations in order to make them readable and dramatically interesting.

Highly recommended.

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Gazza W

Best of both worlds.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 20, 2019

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I love Jasper Fforde and the NCD most of all. This is a knowing poke at crime fiction, whilst being a fantastic whodunit in its own right. Jack Spratt is a detective in the Nursery Crimes Division of Reading police force. Helped by Mary Mary he sets out to redeem his reputation after the jury found the three little pigs innocent of murdering the big bad wolf. His chance comes when an apparent suicide is revealed as murder. Humour Dumpty a serial womanizer is dead. What started as a simple falling off a wall drunk situation, leads our detectives into the murky world of murder and nursery rhymes characters that would freak the brother Grimms. Add a rival cop out to humiliate Spratt, and he has his work cut out. Sacrilege as it may be, Fforde is better, but less prolific than the eminent Pratchett, but Ffordes characters are more rounded, more real and more likable. This is fantasy but in a real world setting.

5 people found this helpful

S Riaz

The Big Over Easy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 28, 2015

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Having really enjoyed, “The Eyre Affair,” I was looking forward to reading this, the first in the ‘Nursery Crimes’ series. DS Mary Mary transfers to Reading Central Police Station, hoping to work with her hero, DCI Friedland Chymes. As with, “The Eyre Affair,” this is a slightly twisted version of reality – so, in this world, the police are lauded not for their ability to solve crimes, but to publish them in crime magazines. In order to become a success, detectives need to join the Guild of Detectives – in which Friedland Chymes is a major success. However, Mary Mary finds that, rather than working with Chymes, she has joined the Nursery Crime Division. Heading the team is DI Jack Spratt, who has just failed to convict the three little pigs for premeditated crimes against a wolf (it takes a long while to boil a huge cauldron of water…).

Into this world of upside down nonsense we follow Jack Spratt and Mary Mary as they investigate their latest case. Humpty Dumpty is dead, but did he fall of a wall, or was he helped? Along the way we meet Greek Gods, investigate dodgy share dealings in Spongg’s footcare empire and await the visit of the Jellyman in Reading. Although this is a lot of fun, I did not find the storyline – or characters- as interesting as the Thursday Next books. Still, it was an enjoyable read and Jasper Fforde manages to name check many literary characters. I especially liked the little newspaper snippets at the beginning of each chapter. I am not sure I would read more in this series, but I am glad I finally got around to reading this.

6 people found this helpful

Andrew Mulholland

Humour and Procedure

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 2, 2018

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Overall I enjoyed this, and read the second volume, but I did find it a bit outside my comfort zone. It is funny, inventive and the characters are well realised. It has some of the characteristics of magical realism, which I have never really enjoyed, but the author doesn't ever forget that it is essentially a police procedural, so - as long as you allow for the existence of nursery rhyme characters! - it remains grounded in everyday life. For me that doesn't entirely work, so the fact that I kept reading shows it is worth a look.

2 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

...so THAT'S what happened???

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 19, 2013

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...now I know. So Humpty Dumpty was in fact Humperdinck Aloisius van Dumpty masqerading as a simple everyday egg bloke. All those things I thought I knew with certainty for all these years are proving to be wrong... the three little pigs were, suspicions might have us believe, guilty as sin. Got off on a technicality (or corruption) I believe. Next they'll discover the scandalous truth about Little Miss Muffet. I think the Reading Police should close their Nursery Crimes Division without delay in case they do, in spite of their ability to weave a full-on working mystery and then solve it with drama and excitement. Considering this is obviously a true to life fly-on-the-wall documentary, it proves beyond doubt that fact is stranger than fiction. Very funny if you like the backwaters of history and don't work for the IPCC.

2 people found this helpful

EGil

A fun and unconventional read, but don't expect high literature

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 28, 2011

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As a frequently jaded book-lover, I always seek out the odd premises and unconventional styles, and this fit the bill. Jasper Fforde was recommended to me as a local author, and I'm glad I picked up 'The Big Over Easy' despite the library's claim to it being a 'Crime' novel, a genre I usually avoid. I enjoyed the quirky take on the usual detective plot, and the many little asides and metatheatrical style.

A fairly quick and undemanding read, I liked its relative simplicity mixed in with a few intricate plot twists and deliciously awful puns and word games. It lacked some character depth, especially in relation to the central character Jack Spratt, and I thought that some of the jokes were stretched a little too far. A fun, happy book that's good for a lazy Sunday afternoon, but with enough substance to make an impression on the reader too. The (mostly unrelated) sequel, The Fourth Bear, is also a good read, and if you enjoy this then I'd definitely recommend it.

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