First in a series about the Nursery Crimes Division, this is an extended joke on the theme of nursery rhymes, fairy tales and the police procedural crime novel, in a world where detectives are approved more for their ability to develop an interesting narrative, written up by their Official Sidekicks, rather than doing actual police work, and the temptation to embelish leads to exaggeration and even 'fixing' of results. In such a world, honest Jack Spratt (who eats no fat, of course), head of the NCD, stands out and is ridiculed and threatened with his division's closure, while his enemy, the top detective Chymes Friedland tries to engineer his downfall. Friedland wants a plum case - the demise of Humpty Dumpty - and does everything possible to discredit Spratt to get it transferred to him, even though he normally belittles the nature of NCD cases and so it is a mystery why he wants it, something never explained.

Lots of nursery rhyme characters appear and the odd fairy tale one such as Rapunzle. There are a few other characters, though refreshingly after the Thursday Next punning ones, some have normal names such as Briggs. I didn't find the world in which this is set quite as wearing either, since it doesn't have time travel/travel into books/constant overload of nutty happenings. Although it vaguely fits into the same universe as the Thursday Next books - at one point, Spratt's DC is driving and pulls out into a road whereupon she is hooted at by a colourful sports car which readers of the (I think second) Thursday Next novels may remember happened from Thursday's perspective - she hooted at a car that pulled out and steered round it - there isn't the everpresent Goliath Corporation and weird inventions etc that are such a fixture of the Next novels. This series is more 'normal' in that respect and takes its form from the police procedural genre albeit with magic beanstalk and other fantasy features. The main issue with it is that it does go on a bit too long, with a lot of repetition of Spratt and his DC Mary Mary going to see various people and interviewing them, and then working out a bit more of the case - I know that is the genre but it did seem rather slow in development. As with the Next books, none of the characters are 'real', with the possible exception of Jack who has a bit more development with a home life shown, wife, children and lodger, though he still isn't very convincing as a real person.

In short, the book is a lightweight entertaining read - some of the funniest bits are the extracts from faked up publications which head the chapters - but not a keeper and I'm not interested enough to read another in the series. ( )

See the review of 'The Eyre Affair'. ( )

I shelved Fforde's books for years at the bookstore and always thought they sounded interesting, but never got around to reading one until a book group I've been longing to participate in met on a night I could attend. I enjoyed reading the book--toward the end when I was starting to think let's wrap this up already, something huge happened that completely caught me off guard that made for a thrilling end. The book wasn't laugh out loud funny for me, but there's lots of good humor and Fforde's imagination is was a joy to behold. I plan on trying his Thursday Next series. Oh, and our book club discussion was a lot of fun although we spent an indecorous amount of time discussing how a male ladies-man-of-an-egg would go about doing all that humping. ( )

This book... I have so many random thoughts about this book. In no particular order:

1. Easily the most highly quotable book I've ever read. Including books of quotes.
One of my favourites:

Mr. Pewter led them through to a library filled with thousands of antiquarian books.
'Impressive, eh?'
'Very,' said Jack. 'How did you amass all these?'
'Well,' said Pewter, 'you know the person who always borrows books and never gives them back?'
'Yes–?'
'I'm that person.'

Don't know why, but that cracked me up.

2. I'm pretty sure Fforde had no intention of writing a satire (based on what I've found on the interwebs) about the sensationalism of the free press, but this is definitely a case of current events shaping a reader's interpretation of the text. I had a really hard time reading this and not drawing parallels.

3. I'm equally sure he definitely meant to write a satirised murder mystery and this was easily the closest I've ever read to my blog's namesake movie, Murder By Death, which in my totally biased opinion is the acme of mystery satire. Which brings me to another quote:

Dog Walker's Face Body-Finding Ban

Anyone who finds a corpse while walking their dog may be fined if proposed legislation is made law, it was disclosed yesterday. The new measures, part of the Criminal Narrative Improvement Bill, have been drafted to avoid investigations looking clichéd...

Now this is legislation I can get behind.

4. I wish I'd picked this book up directly after reading The Well of Lost Plots. It makes no difference to someone new to Fforde's books, but I think those that have read TN would feel a stronger connection to the characters here when The Well... was still fresh in the memory.

5. Prometheus has an incredible monologue on pages 271-273. A popular fiction novel that can weave serious philosophy into its narrative always earns huge bonus points with me.

6. Oh, yeah - good mystery plot too!

Off to order the second one... ( )

I had forgotten that these are in the same Thursday Next universe. I chuckled and finished it but it didn't sweep me along. The ultimate cause of death in the whodunnit was very good. ( )