Review: The Big Over Easy

So, here’s a story that doesn’t really have anything to get the book, but I’ll tell it anyway. For whatever reason, growing up we didn’t refer to our eggs as being “over easy.” Instead, we referred to our eggs as being “once over lightly.” When I first moved in with my husband, I kept telling him I wanted my eggs "once over lightly" and he kept looking at me like I was a crazy person. It took me a while to get used to calling my eggs over easy instead.

Anyway...

Meet Inspector Jack Spratt, family man and head of the Nursery Crime Division. He’s investigating the murder of ovoid D-class nursery celebrity Humpty Dumpty, found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. Yes, the big egg is down, and all those brittle pieces sitting in the morgue point to foul play.

I wasn’t entirely sure you get much sillier than the Thursday Next books by Jasper Fforde, but he certainly done it with his Nursery Crime series. Someone on Librarything wrote that reading this book was a little bit like watching a Shrek movie and I have to say, I agree. References and allusions go by at a mile a minute. Some of them went right over my head but in general, I caught enough to be amused by the book. The story goes by very quickly which is good, because the plot takes so many twists and turns the book gets rather drawn out. Also, the characters are all very flat - maybe that befits a book based on nursery tales, but it certainly meant that I never really connected on a deeper level with the story. Ford, though, is a great writer and he really knows how to choose his words carefully, making The Big Over Easy very readable and enjoyable.

Buy The Big Over Easy on Amazon.