BBAW 2012 Day 4: Book pimpin' @jasperfforde!

Thursdays prompt:
One of the best parts about book blogging is the exposure to books and authors you might never have heard of before. Pimp the book you think needs more recognition on this day. Get creative! Maybe share snippets from other bloggers who have reviewed it or make some fun art to get your message across.

Well, I didn't make anything but...



If I were really cool/talented/a GarageBand Wizard, I would have transformed JayZ's anthem about basically being a dude with lots of chicks in his music video into a sample about pimping good books, but I'm not.  Be we can all hum along making the necessary word replacements:  Book pimpin'...na na na naaah na-a nah...book pimpin'....

Moving on.

I am pimping out Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crimes series.  Now, I think most people have at least heard of his Thursday Next series, starting with The Eyre Affair.  It was his first published and longest series with the newest installment due out October 2 (I managed to lay hands on an ARC of The Woman Who Died Alot.  Squee!).  It's a pretty sci-fi/crazeballs/humor/crazeballs/book-geek series.  But Nursery Crime is hard-boiled mystery noir...with nursery rhyme characters.  Yeah, you heard that - nursery rhyme characters.  In the first book, The Big Over Easy, DI Jack Spratt - fresh off his very public failure to prosecute the Three Little Pigs for the disappearance of the Big Bad Wolf - is saddled with both a new partner, Mary Mary, and a new crime, the death of Humpty Dumpty.  Right away there are many motives and many inconsistencies - did HD fall, or was he pushed?  He was pretty depressed, did he jump?  He was also drunk, so perhaps it was an accident.  Something is very rotten in the city of Reading, England. 

 

Following Jack's success with Humpty Dumpty, he is presented with a double-whammy:  the homicidal Gingerbread Man escapes from his high-security prison (is he a cake or a cookie?) and investigative journalist Goldilocks is missing possibly murdered in the Three Bears' house...but there is evidence of a FOURTH BEAR!  And what is up with the goings on at SommeWorld?  Plus, he has to deal with the illegal dealing of honey by the ursine population.  And Mary goes on a date with Ashley, their Rhombosian co-worker (yup, he's an alien).  Will Jack survive to solve Goldie's disappearance or will the Gingerbread Man wreak his revenge? 

Could this get any better?  Fforde has a third book in the series planned, too - I believe it will center on the Great Tortise vs. Hare Race.  If you take my advice and read Nursery Crime - and Thursday Next - go on to the first volume in Shades of Grey, and the first volume of his YA series, The Last Dragonslayer, due out October 2 (if you are UK side, I believe the second book, The Song of the Quarkbeast, is out now with the last book, The Return of Shandar, planned for somtime this year still).

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