I have been a huge fan of Jasper Fforde ever since picking up The Eyre Affair one of the long lonely summers I spent in England. I promptly read every book in the Thursday Next series, but had fallen out of touch with Fforde’s work. Then I stumbled across The Big Over Easy.

This starts a new series which takes place in the primary world of the Thursday Next books, but follows a whole different subset of characters: nursery rhyme characters that don’t know they’re characters and the poor detective and his new side kick who have to deal with the Nursery community’s squabbles and crimes.

As with all of Fforde’s work, The Big Over Easy was a brilliantly funny read, with all sorts of tawdry jokes and dry humor. For instance, Jack Spratt, the lead detective, is given quite the hard time for all the giants he’s killed, though they’ve all been accidents or good shooting according to the police and he maintains that only the first one was actually a giant. All the rest were merely tall. This particular novel follows the death of Humpty Dumpty after a particularly nasty fall from a wall, and who/what/how he was murdered, which isn’t as straightforward as you might think.

I highly recommend this to anyone who loves the British dry wit as much as I do, as he is a fabulous author with a fantastic imagination who really brings these characters to life.