Books: Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde

The Fourth Bear is the second hilarious installment in Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crime series. We rejoin DCI Jack Spratt (who never eats fat) and his side-kick Mary Mary in the Nursery Crime Division at Reading Police Headquarters. In this latest adventure, Spratt and his team are looking into the disappearance of newspaper reporter Henrietta 'Goldilocks' Hatchett, a hard-working journalist (fussy in a not too hot, not too cold, not too hard, not too soft kind of way) who was looking into a story about giant cucumber contests at the time she went missing. Add to the mix psychotic murderer Gingerbread Man, who has escaped a high security institution, curious goings-on at the soon-to-be-opened theme park SommeWorld and a missing eccentric nuclear scientist and you have all the ingredients for a hilarious and very clever mystery. Fforde's puns and references to various nursery rhyme characters (Persons of Dubious Reality) come thick and fast, and this together with the occasional situation where both Spratt and Mary are aware that they are characters in a novel makes this book a good, fun read. Highly recommended, along with its predecessor, The Big Over Easy.