A murder mystery which happens in a world where the creatures of the fairytales really exist. There are also some other differences. Solving crimes is considered as entertainment and a finding out who committed a murder too soon is often considered as unfortunate and boring: it isn’t possible to write an exciting story this way. Here, Inspector Jack Spratt is in charge of the nursery crime division of the police department. His track record hasn’t been too good after a recent failure to get a conviction for three little pigs for the brutal murder of a wolf because a jury of pigs gave an acquittal for the crime. Now a new crime has happened: Humpty Dumpty has fallen down from the wall he used to sit on. It soon turns out that it wasn’t an accident, it was a murder. But who did it? It appears as if Humpty was a quite the womanizer. He also played in the investment market, but with very poor results. Soon they find who the murderer was – a written confession before a suicide is a pretty good proof of evidence, but what if it turns out that it must have been someone else?
An avalanche of ideas and events – not all very sensible or coherent – ensues, but what else could be expected about a book which deals with crimes committed by characters from nursery stories? At times it looks like there are too many ideas. At times, the story slows down and examining the ideas for a little while might have been a better idea itself. A pretty good book, but not as good as most of the Thursday Next books.
420 pp.
No comments:
Post a Comment