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Fun, but as with most everything I like, complicated.The story begins with Mary Mary being shown around Reading Central Police Station by Superintendent Briggs. She needed a transfer, and Reading was home to the famous DCI Friedland Chymes, known across England for his exploits in Amazing Crime Stories. Mary had high hopes of being assigned to Chymes’ team, but is instead assigned to partner with Jack Spratt, of the Department of Nursery Crimes. You know–those crimes having to do with people (so...
Amazon calls this "probably Fforde's weakest novel" - a statement I must say I highly disagree with. It's much better than Lost in a Good Book and almost on par with The Eyre Affair - something which I thought absolutely impossible.I love how Fforde dares to use the media to get his point across and how he plays around with commonly known concepts and stories without ever blatantly showing his readers "This is what I'm talking about, I'm so obvious you have to get it now!". He perfectly masters
I picked this up for some light comfort reading over the weekend, and it did not disappoint. This is by way of being a very loose spin-off from the Thursday Next books (Thursday encounters Mary Mary's home in a book character exchange program) and really is a standalone series. Detective Jack Spratt heads up the Nursery Crime division at the Reading police department, and when Humpty Dumpty is found dead at the base of a wall, shattered into a thousand pieces, the case is clearly his and just as...
Jasper Fforde is a master and he has done it again with this book. I couldn't put it down.
I read this book several years ago, and so don’t have a lot to say about it today. I reread it as part of my book club, but in the intervening years, the distance gave me some perspective that let me recognize or enjoy a few more jokes: * Charles Pewter, of The Diary of an Ordinary Man shows up in the book, with a couple funny jokes about his house. * I’ve come to appreciate the vast number of goofs on the genre that Fforde perpetrates. I still particularly like the attention to what car Jack dr...
Jasper Fforde, lover of slapstick and absurdity has another winner with this series of Nursery Rhyme crimes. Many of your favourite nursery rhyme character will appear in this humorous tale of the demise of big egg and womaniser Humpty Dumpty who fell off a wall - or was he pushed or shot or drugged or poisoned? Jack Spratt who likes his bacon lean and has accidently killed several giants (although he claims three of them were just very tall men) is an Inspector in the Nursery Crimes Division wh...
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 Dete...
Was it an EGGcident…or cold-yoked murder? When Humpty Dumpty, local businessman and infamous lothario, is found dead beneath a wall outside his Grimm’s Road apartment, Detective Jack Spratt of the Reading (pronounced Redding) Nursery Crime Division (NCD) is called in to investigate. Jack is a smart, capable, no-fat eating investigator whose previous collars include the apprehensions of (i) serial wife-killer, Bluebeard, (ii) psychotic mass-murderer, The Gingerbread Man and (iii) a certain bridg...
5 Things To Know Before Reading This Book1. It is a murder mystery.2. The victim is an enormous egg named Humpty Dumpty. (He fell off a wall … or was pushed or possibly shot.)3. The detective investigating the crime is named Jack Spratt. His partner is Mary Mary.4. Jack and Mary work for the Nursery Crimes Division (NCD).5. You should brush up on your nursery rhymes and fairy tales before reading so as to fully enjoy the book. (It took me almost halfway through to dredge up the fact that Jack’s
In a nutshell: this book is a suspenseful absurdist whodunit, featuring several brutal murders, suicide, decomposed corpses, money laundering schemes, biological weapons, corrupt police investigations, intradepartmental spying, biased reporting and highly illegal genetic experiments.And it all stars with the gruesome untimely demise of a certain Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III, “minor baronet, ex-convict, and former millionaire philanthropist”, a gigolo and drunk and a con artist — and, of cour...
Jasper Fforde is just so much fun. His books are sorta like beach reads for book nerds. They're playful, punny, funny, silly, and smart. Also I saw him read in a small bookstore in SoHo a couple of years ago and he is hilarious. He talked about how he and his kids play games in supermarkets where they put really incongruous and semi-embarrasing things in other people's shopping carts (I think he called them 'trolleys' because of course he British or maybe Austrailian?), like adult diapers for y
This is my first experience with Jasper Fforde and I have to say I really enjoyed this book. I read this story out loud to my children. A few parts I said "kissing" instead of you know what. Overall very enjoyable, especially if you are old enough to know all the nursery rhymes. I grew up reading Mother Goose, so I knew them all. My 13 year old unfortunately skipped that book on his shelf teehee. I had to read the rhymes so he would know where the characters came from.If you didn't read the syno...
Who killed Humpty Dumpty? In this amazingly silly police-procedural, we follow Detective-Inspector Jack Spratt (aka Jack Beanstalk, Giant Killer) and Detective Sergeant Mary Mary of the Reading Police, Nursery Crimes Division through the twists and turns of this, um, fractured fairy-tale. Just about every half-remembered nursery-rhyme character makes an appearance: The Three Little Pigs, Rumplestilkin, clues such as an auburn, 28-foot long human hair -- along with more about podiatry than you re...
3.5 stars
07/15: Finished it today. So damn funny, if you like puns and referential literary humor and British mysteries. Simultaneously a romp (yes, a romp!) through nursery rhymes and fairy tales, while sending up the ridiculousness of both old-school murder mysteries and modern-day police procedurals. Recommended to anyone who likes mysteries and fairy tales. Will definitely be checking out the next one from the library in short order.07/14: Halfway through. Can't wait to finish. If Wales were not so v...
What the hell did i just read?! Oh I see, there's two Fs on the cover. Oh right, this is going to be very silly indeed. I sort of hate admitting how much I enjoy these stupid books. I thin I'm gong to listen to another one.
Outstanding! This may be my next book club recommendation. Being a mom of a toddler makes it even more amusing - especially when reading Mother Goose before bedtime. I normally avoid mysteries but I highly recommend this one.Despite the dry and everpresent humor, it still wasn't hard to come up with my favorite paragraph: ALIENS BORING, REPORT SHOWSAn official report confirms what most of us have already suspected: that the alien visitors who arrived unexpectedly on the planet four years ago ar...
I’d wanted to start this review with ”tongue in cheek" and was thinking the phrase is a dated expression – so I Googled it “it is ironic, slyly humorous; not meant to be taken seriously, however its sarcasm is subtle”. Take off the subtle and you're there as far as book description. For fans of British humor, wry, droll - especially entertaining for fans of mystery, specifically British mystery series that it alludes to often.If you are prone to bone deep depression upon reminders that the gener...
I've found Jasper Fforde's books generally fun/amusing. I'd read the Thursday Next books; I expected to enjoy Nursery Crimes. There was nothing I'd point to that was wrong with the book, although being familiar with his writing, I wasn't terribly surprised by the tone, form, style, etc, etc. Someone else described it as a "beach read for nerds" -- which sounds just about right to me. It's heavy on puns and references, light on real characterisation. While there has to be a plot, it feels very mu...
This was hard for me to love at first. I knew it was trying to be funny, but I kept taking it too seriously. Previous to chapter 16 I was prepared to write this review: "Didn't like it as much as I wanted to." After my husband explained the nursery rhyme that was meant to be the heading to chapter 19, I lightened up and found myself laughing as I had hoped at the beginning. It's a bit like a Monty Python movie... or Zoolander... the first time it just seems like stupidity... but then you find yo...