The Big Over Easy

I do like novels that are a little bit quirky and pose the question "what if the extraordinary was actually ordinary?". I liked the Anita Blake novels for exactly this reason, primarly because the idea of vampires sitting side by side with us in our world is a curious one. Equally in The Big Over Easy, the idea that literary characters are real and their universe exists besides ours is also intriguing. Humpty Dumpty has been murdered - apparently, although it does appear to be a suicide. DI Jack Spratt and his new DS Mary Mary are determined to find the real killer, but the famous DCI Friedland Chymes wants the case so he can have another brilliant write up in the papers that tell the stories of famous detectives. However, the Nursery Crimes Division of the Reading Police Department is not in favour - mainly due to their inablity to prosecute the three little pigs for the murder of the big, bad wolf - and so Spratt and Mary have little time to prove their case. All of this is complicated further by Mary wanting to be out of the NCD and in Chymes' little army, meaning she is more than a little open to temptation.

Come on, you can't not like the concept. Because, don't get me wrong, this is no kid's book. This is a proper adult novel, written about kids' things and that just makes it all the more fascinating. The ultimate revelation of what happened to Humpty is both very, very clever, and yet so obvious you can't help but wonder why it's never been written about before. Equally clever is the fact that Spratt and Mary, despite amazed at the idea that nursery rhyme characters aren't aware of their fictious existance, are just as unaware of their own less than factual lives.

I genuinely enjoyed this novel. It's full of great twists and turns, and great characters, with references to such a variety of literature that it's almost a certainty that I missed a great deal of it.

"A"