It's Easter in Reading — a bad time for eggs — and no one can remember the last sunny day. Ovoid D-class nursery celebrity Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III, minor baronet, ex-convict, and former millionaire philanthropist, is found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. All the evidence points to his ex-wife, who has conveniently shot herself.

But Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his assistant Mary Mary remain unconvinced, a sentiment not shared with their superiors at the Reading Police Department, who are still smarting over their failure to convict the Three Pigs of murdering Mr. Wolff. Before long Jack and Mary find themselves grappling with a sinister plot involving cross-border money laundering, bullion smuggling, problems with beanstalks, titans seeking asylum, and the cut and thrust world of international chiropody.

And on top of all that, the Jelly Man is coming to town...

"Fforde's whimsical fifth novel, his first not to feature literary detective Thursday Next, is consistently witty, but its conceit — putting a criminal spin on nursery rhymes — wears a bit thin. Det. Jack Spratt, the dedicated but underappreciated investigator in the Reading, England, Nursery Crimes Division, is depressed because the court finds the three little pigs 'not guilty of all charges relating to the first-degree murder of Mr. Wolff.' Working with an ambitious young detective, Mary Mary ('Quite Contrary'), Spratt later takes on the case of 'fall guy' Humpty Dumpty. Fforde crafts a police procedural out of this bizarre alternative universe that prizes, as The Eyre Affair does, literacy (detectives, for example, garner recognition less for solving crimes than by writing articles about cases for the likes of Amazing Crime Stories or Sleuth Illustrated). While it can be charming to encounter Mrs. Hubbard or Tom Thomm or to hear Spratt bemoan 'illegal straw-into-gold dens' in this unusual context, the novel's broad satire overshadows elements like plot, conflict and characterization. The result is unusually clever but not compelling in the least. Publishers Weekly

"The British have a rich tradition of nonsense and whimsy, and Fforde is a worthy standard-bearer." Booklist

"Like the Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket books, this one is abundantly playful without being truly geared to children." Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"Full of allusions and puns on detective fiction and nursery rhymes, Fforde's fifth novel and first in a new series is good fun for all fiction collections. Highly recommended." Library Journal

"While the effect is at first hilarious and ingenious,eventually the charm wears off. Shallow and snarky, though the concept is clever." Kirkus Review

When D-class nursery celebrity Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III, is found shattered to death, all the evidence points to his ex-wife, who has conveniently shot herself. But Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his assistant Mary Mary remain unconvinced.

Jasper Fforde is the author of the bestselling Thursday Next series. The Big Over Easy is the first in his new Nursery Crime series.