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.
Fforde takes a detour from Thursday Next's territory to offer a truly cracked take on nursery rhymes-cracked being the operative word here, as Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III is found all in pieces. Clearly, Detective Jack Spratt and assistant Mary Mary have their hands full. With a ten-city tour. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, and, well, you know the rest. But was Humpty's fall an accident, or was it murder? It's up to giant killer Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division to get to the bottom of it. Humpty was quite a ladies' man, but a few people thought him a bad egg. Jack has a number of suspects, a new partner to break in and gloryhound/antagonist Detective Inspector Chimes to deal with. Prebble's sonorous British voice is ideally suited to narrating this whimsical, fractured fairy tale; his tone and pacing match Fforde's prose perfectly, and his subtle vocal acrobatics enable him to amusingly bring to life the novel's wildly divergent cast of characters. Despite its many virtues, this is probably Fforde's weakest novel, lacking the literary sophistication of the Thursday Next books. But Prebble's performance easily makes this Fforde's best audiobook to date. Prebble's vibrant, all-star narration more than makes up for them. Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover (Reviews, June 6). (July) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
"A wonderfully readable riot . . . [A] cleverly plotted, magically overstuffed yet amazingly digestible book . . . This summer's perfect beach read for eggheads." --The Wall Street Journal"As if the Marx brothers were let loose in the children's section of a strange bookstore." --USA Today"Pythonesque . . . Like the Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket books, this one is abundantly playful without being truly geared for children. Anyone who has ever been read a nursery rhyme . . . can appreciate Mr. Fforde's outlandish joking." --Janet Maslin, The New York Times
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