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The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime by [Jasper Fforde]

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Jasper Fforde

The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime Kindle Edition

by Jasper Fforde (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

373 ratings

Book 2 of 2: Nursery Crime Adventures

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Return to the world of the Nursery Crime Division in this novel from Jasper Fforde, the New York Times bestselling author of the Thursday Next series and The Constant Rabbit

The inimitable Jasper Fforde gives readers another delightful mash-up of detective fiction and nursery rhyme, returning to those mean streets where no character is innocent. The Gingerbreadman—sadist, psychopath, cookie—is on the loose in Reading, but that’s not who Detective Jack Spratt and Sergeant Mary Mary are after. Instead, they’ve been demoted to searching for missing journalist “Goldy” Hatchett. The last witnesses to see her alive were the reclusive Three Bears, and right away Spratt senses something furry—uh, funny—about their story, starting with the porridge. The Fourth Bear is a delirious new romp from our most irrepressible fabulist.

Print length

404 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Books
Publication date

July 31, 2007
Reading age

18 years and up
File size

1759 KB
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Books In This Series (2 Books)

Complete Series

Nursery Crime Adventures

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1
The Big Over Easy: A Nursery Crime (A Nursery Crime Novel Book 1)
Jasper Fforde

(556)

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$4.99
2
The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime
Jasper Fforde

(373)

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$5.99

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Like The Big Over Easy (2005), Fforde's first Nursery Crime novel, this sequel offers literary allusions, confusions and gentle satire, though, again like its predecessor, it lacks the snap of the author's Thursday Next series (The Eyre Affair, etc.). Jack Spratt, DCI of the Nursery Crime Division of the Reading Police Department, is also a PDR (Person of Dubious Reality), as are most of the characters Jack deals with, including the Gingerbreadman, a notorious killer, and Punch and Judy, a violence prone couple who are also marriage counselors. An alien policeman named Ashley, talking bears, a devoted group of cucumber-growing enthusiasts and an immensely powerful company, Quang Tech, add spice. All are grist for Fforde, whose word play runs the gamut from puns to shaggy dog stories. The Gingerbreadman's on the loose, Goldilocks is missing and Jack's once again persona non grata at headquarters. As Jack and his associates "bring justice to the nursery world," they also cast a Swiftian eye on corporate hubris, race relations, the drug trade and myriad other targets. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From AudioFile

Jasper Fforde continues his tales of the Nursery Crime unit of the Reading Police Department, where Detectives Jack Spratt and Mary Mary investigate crimes involving fairy tale figures. With his perfectly clipped British accent, Simon Vance does his usual expert performance. In this case, he makes the improbable, unlikely, and downright ridiculous seem perfectly normal. It would be hard to imagine this novel without him. The plot includes the escape of the vicious serial killer the Gingerbreadman and the hunt for the missing gossip columnist, Goldy. Prime suspects are the Three Bears she was once involved with. But was there a fourth bear? Fforde is also known for his bestselling Thursday Next series. M.S. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

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.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Booklist

Still on leave from his wildly inventive Thursday Next series (Something Rotten, 2004), Fforde offers a second entry in his wildly inventive Nursery Crime series (The Big Over Easy, 2005). The sadistic and superpowerful Gingerbreadman, nemesis of Jack Spratt, has escaped from St. Cerebellum's secure hospital for the criminally insane. Unfortunately, Spratt has been suspended pending psychological evaluation for his role in the Red Riding Hood fiasco. Though at first he resists doing "a plot device number twenty-six" and hunting for the Gingerbreadman on his own, eventually Spratt has no choice but to follow the rules of detective convention. All he and his mismatched team have to do is find the links between exploding extreme-cucumber-growers, a missing reporter nicknamed Goldilocks, a theme park called SommeWorld, and, oh yes, porridge dealers. Chockablock with puns, literary allusions, groanworthy asides, and playful dismantling of the police procedural--wearing its love for an almost-extinct form of children's literature like a tattoo--The Fourth Bear will appeal to fans of whimsy, silliness, or plain old nonsense. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

Jasper Fforde is able to write diabolically. . . . Outrageous satirical agility is his stock in trade. (The New York Times)

Like the creators of . . . The Simpsons and South Park, Mr. Fforde uses fantasy to dissect real life. . . . He is our best thinking personÆs genre writer. (The Washington Times)

Mr. Fforde manages to bombard the reader with more bizarre detail than most writers would dare to fit in their entire oeuvre, yet he does so with . . . light prose and easy, confident wit. (The Wall Street Journal)

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000UWAEW2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; Reprint edition (July 31, 2007)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 31, 2007
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1759 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 404 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #130,854 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #455 in Folklore (Kindle Store)
- #547 in Fairy Tales (Kindle Store)
- #597 in Lawyers & Criminals Humor

Customer Reviews:
373 ratings

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5 star		75%
4 star		17%
3 star		5%
2 star		1%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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J. Bair

What is Not to Like?

Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2018

Verified Purchase

The Fourth Bear is subtitled A Nursery Crime, and, yes, there are many word plays and allusions throughout this book. For anyone growing up with fairy tales and nursery rhymes, this is fun.

Our main character is Jack Spratt—yes, that Jack Sprat whose first wife died of complications from obesity. Now he is trying to live a normal human life—hence, the new spelling of his name—rather than his previous life as a PDR, Person of Dubious Reality.

Any fan of detective stories knows that the good detective picks up on anomalies—like Sherlock Holmes noting that the dog did not bark. So it is with the story of the Three Bears. If the bears were having a meal together, the porridges would have all been cooked in one pot and served at the same time. The three bowls should have all been the same temperature, or nearly so. Why was Papa’s too hot, Mama’s too cold, and Baby’s in between? And why was Goldilocks murdered?

We get appearances from the Quangle Wangle, the Gingerbread Man (a serial criminal who taunts the police with “You can’t catch me”), Dorian Grey (a used car salesman with an unusual guarantee), Madeleine Usher, a space alien, some scientists from Laputa, and others too numerous to mention. This book is a hoot.

3 people found this helpful

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Anne M. Kleinginna

Crazy premise but wonderful story

Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2019

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This book is a sequel to "The Big Over Easy," which is also crazy and wonderful. We return to the Nursery Crimes Division and officer Jack Spratt, investigating crimes among the PDR (Persons of Dubious Reality), among whom he is numbered. Despite the offbeat humor, this is a very satisfying police procedural with believable (?!) and likable characters. Fforde is a twisted genius reminiscent of Terry Pratchett, although a bit less accessible, and I highly recommend this series to lovers of literary silliness.

One person found this helpful

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Paul Schaffner

Vintage Fforde whimsy, cruelly Americanized in US edition

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2016

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I love Jasper Fforde; I read and re-read him. But I regret to say that the U.S. Penguin edition of The Fourth Bear is not Jasper Fforde: it is evidently the work of a ham-handed Americanizing editor: ironically enough, a genuine 'fiction infraction.' I find myself on virtually every page having to mentally reconstruct what Jasper must actually have written, rather than attending to what I'm reading, which is very distracting. For example, there is an extended joke concerning the Gingerbreadman, as to whether he is a 'cookie or a cake' -- an obvious reference to the famous tax dispute about McVitie's Jaffa Cakes, as to whether they were biscuits or cakes. The joke is lost in the translation to 'cookie.' I don't have a copy of the UK edition to compare, but unless he chose for some bizarre reason of his own to write the entire book in American, Mr. Fforde could *not* have written cringe-worthy phrases like 'every food store and gas station in town' or 'underground parking lot' (a phrase that makes no sense in either dialect). If you want to read the unBowdlerized Jasper, I suggest buying the UK edition; that's what I plan to do.

20 people found this helpful

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Sean Curley

Fforde follows up with another hit story.

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2008

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Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and Detective Sergeant Mary Mary return in their second adventure by author Jasper Fforde, which builds off the events of "The Big Over Easy" while at the same time avoiding repeating the chief themes of that novel. Fforde has conjured up an elaborate fantastical world in this series of novels, and it is a delight to return to it (he has spoken of a third and final "Nursery Crime" story at some point in the future, which I highly anticipate).

Solving the murder of Humpty Dumpty made Jack Spratt famous, but, as the new book opens, he has fallen somewhat, thanks to a couple of botched operations, most notably his failure in the Red Riding Hood case, which left both Red and her grandmother catatonic. He is told to attend a psychiatric evaluation, which he fervently would rather avoid, even as a young reporter with golden hair turns up dead at a Battle of the Somme theme park ("Somme World", which is designed to mortify anyone who goes there), hours after she was discovered naked in bed at the Bruin household. Who killed Goldilocks, and why? Included here are, among other amusing details, the reasons why the story of the smallest bowl being 'just right' doesn't hold water, and what that indicates.

Fforde is not content to hit the same notes that made "The Big Over Easy" so entertaining, which some may see as a negative, depending on what you think about what he chooses to replace it with. The first novel made a great deal of the fictional unverse's obsession with 'true crime' stories, and the effect this had on police procedure, but this angle is more or less absent from "The Fourth Bear". There is no sense that the characters are spending their time trying to be more dramatic; Briggs, Jack's police captain, has seemingly gone from a self-aware parody of the trope where police captains are always suspending their officers to merely another example of that trope played straight (albeit with every referring to "Plot Device Number _" in reference to various strategies and situations they find themselves in). Playing the story a bit more straight adds a bit more straight-up drama to the story, though Fforde has not toned down his trademark irreverence one bit.

This approach also allows for some real exploration of the characters in a non-satirical context, and both Jack and Mary get a lot of good development here. Jack's concerns one of the intriguing new angles Fforde introduces here: a more thorough explanation of the existence of 'fictional' characters in the 'real' world, and how they differ from normal humans. Jack is a 'PDR' (Person of Dubious Reality), but seems to be fairly well-adjusted, while he is able to call out his psychiatrist on being a threadbare plot device who has no backstory or memories otuside what the author has supplied her with (which is emotionally devastating).

Fforde casts his net quite wide in terms of source material, reeling in not just Southey's characters but far more obscure ones such as Mr and Mrs. Punch (British puppets who I suspect non-Brits such as myself will find rather mystifying); and the entire mystery revolves around various figures from Edward Lear's "The Quangle Wangle's Hat", which I had never heard of before, but numerous important plot details are drawn from it (one might consider reading that poem before reading this).

All in all, another winner from Fforde.

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Gazza W

Fairy Tales go dark, and funny.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 13, 2019

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Whilst Jasper has various series ongoing, the Next series is his most famous, the Nursery Crimes series is my favourite. Only complaint, where is book three. Jack Sprat, one T, is head of nursery crimes division in Reading. Strange deaths, exploding cucumbers and the truth about Goldilocks are covered. Add in Mary Mary an alien who speaks binary and various plot devices you have a weird read. But at the heart, an ex ellent whodunit. I am jot going into huge ot discussions, just read it, but oh, oh, the biggest mystery of all. What happened to book 3.

2 people found this helpful

A. P. Oliver

Hard to recommend

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 10, 2021

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Let's start by saying a lot of people do like these books, so perhaps you should try them anyway. For me though, they fail an important test. They are just not funny. The characters feels two-dimensional and under-written while the dialogue is stiff. The net effect is that I am bored by the characters and since I am not interested in what they are doing or why, it is hard for them to amuse. All that is left is a certain wit (and the writing is indeed witty in many places), but that's just not enough to carry it off.

Paulusc

Recommended for anyone with an abstract sense of humour

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 14, 2013

Verified Purchase

I was looking for something to read after being immersed in everything Terry Pratchett for many years and Jasper Fforde seemed to be along the right lines. Having read the first four Thursday Next iterations, I thought the first Nursery Crime Adventure (The Big Over Easy) would be worth a read, how right I was; brilliant!!

So, The Fourth Bear has DCI Jack Spratt involved in a contorted investigation for the killer of Goldilocks, the activities of the ersine underground and also the reason why a series of championship-winning, green-fingered, former scientists have progressively been bumped off. Suspended again, not this time due to any plot device, but on the basis that he will be subject to a psychiatric analysis by the partner of his wife's ex husband, who he has managed to insult only hours previously at a social gathering. Meanwhile, trying to secure the proof that a car with an ability to restore itself, sold to him by a character from a Dickens novel who has a pact with the Devil, is not an indication of his definite tentative hold with reality.. Rapid moving, numerous plot lines, laugh-out-loud funnies, this will have you gripped until the final page!

Fforde manages to write in a manner which seems to reflect precisely the way my own humour works; I loved this to bits, just can't wait for the next (no pun intended) adventure.

3 people found this helpful

Aspidistra

Goldilocks, bears, cucumbers and so much more...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 4, 2020

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Another mystery for the Nursery Crimes crew and every bit as good as the first one, by which I mean convoluted, absurd and hilarious yet a perfectly put together crime novel. I'll never look at a cucumber in the same way again.

A. Marczak

Once upon a time in Reading.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 13, 2011

Verified Purchase

If you've enjoyed The Big Over Easy, then you're in for a treat with this. Fforde takes the modern detective novel and throws a unique twist by setting his story in the middle class suburbia of Reading and adding nursery rhyme characters in all their glory.

So you have the main protagonist, Jack Spratt, living next to the contant domestic violence of Punch and Judy, along with a mysterious wood inhabited by Three Bears.

With thermo-nuclear cucumbers, full frontals in outer space and a psychotic gingerbreadman, there are few pages that do not venture into the surreal. It's a great thriller, with plenty of twists and turns along the way, even if the ending is a little obvious.

And of course it does attempt to answer a question that has bugged parents for years. If the three bears made porridge, and put it into 3 bowls at the same time, how come they were all at such wildly different temperatures?

2 people found this helpful

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