The Big Over Easy

Jasper Fforde’s 2005 whodunit, The Big Over Easy, is a surreal hybrid of mystery fiction and Mother Goose. Detective Jack Spratt heads the police department’s Nursery Crimes Division in modern-day Reading, England, where people, nursery rhyme characters, aliens, and Greek deities co-exist. Steadfast and honorable, Jack takes his job seriously, but no one else does, and his division gets more derision than funding. When Humpty Dumpty falls from a wall and evidence points to homicide, the case cracks open a scandalous criminal underworld, becoming the biggest break of Jack’s career.

Humperdinck Stuyvesant van Dumpty III, better known as Humpty Dumpty, is found dead, apparently due to multiple injuries sustained from a fall, and Jack Spratt is called to investigate. Jack’s new assistant, Mary Mary (“quite contrary”), is on the scene too, although reluctantly. Recently transferred from Basingstoke, Mary hoped for an assignment with Reading’s celebrated detective, Friedland Chymes, whose colorful cases always make “good copy” for the pages of Amazing Crime Stories. As Jack’s boss acknowledges, “Modern policing isn’t about catching criminals,” but tackling crimes that have high profile, headline-grabbing potential.

Jack’s lackluster nursery crimes investigations don’t make it into the pages of Amazing Crimes, much less onto the “telly.” “The Most Worshipful Guild of Detectives,” which publishes Amazing Crimes, repeatedly rejects his application to join. His investigations are too dull, and so is his personal life. Since the death of his first wife (“who could eat no lean”), Jack has been happily married to Madeleine, a photographer, and a good father to his five children. To make matters worse, he recently failed to win a murder conviction in the case of Three Little Pigs vs Mr. Wolf.



When forensic evidence points to foul play in Humpty Dumpty’s death, the case promises to be a boon for the sagging budget of the Nursery Crimes Division (NCD), which is threatened with closure. Humpty’s neighbors and landlady, Mother Hubbard, consider him a good egg, but it soon emerges he was a womanizer, drunk, dodgy businessman, and occasional philanthropist. Without delay, Jack interviews two possible witnesses: Wee Willie Winkie and Prometheus, who is seeking asylum in Reading. Jack arranges to rent his spare bedroom to Prometheus.

Jack and Mary search Humpty’s residence, where they find a 28-foot strand of hair, a giant verruca, and several shares in Reading’s preeminent footcare company, Spongg. Jack’s visit to Randolph Spongg’s home is eye opening, as it features revolving rooms and stairways that ascend into nowhere. Spongg reveals that his footcare empire is floundering due to competition from Winsum and Loosum Pharmaceuticals. Humpty, anticipating a rebound in Spongg’s fortunes, had bought shares in the company.

Jack’s efforts to question Dr. Deborah Quatt at St. Cerebellum’s Hospital prove futile, as she will only confirm Humpty was her patient. Moving on, Jack, Mary, and Constable Ashley (an alien on the NCD team who thinks in binary code) investigate the sudden death of Humpty’s ex-wife, Laura Garibaldi. Witnesses at the biscuit factory owned by the Garibaldi family say the ex-Mrs. Dumpty launched herself into a vat of chocolate, in what looked to be an act of suicide.



Within days, another death complicates the Humpty Dumpty case. Wee Willie Winkie is murdered, the victim of blows from a sharp instrument. From the money found clutched in his hand, Jack deduces Willie knew the identity of Humpty’s killer and was attempting to blackmail the villain.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Spratt, Jack’s mother, decides to cash in her cow painting for some extra spending money. Jack dutifully takes the artwork to auction, but it is deemed a fake. He receives only a handful of beans for it, which outrages Mrs. Spratt, who tosses them out the window.

Lola Vavoom is a faded screen star from the 1980s who lives adjacent to Humpty’s rooms. Acting on Lola’s observation that Humpty’s shower runs non-stop, Jack investigates, finding Tom Thomm’s soggy, lifeless body in the bath with several gunshot wounds. Jack’s verdict: Laura, Humpty’s ex-wife, shot the figure in the shower, believing it was Humpty. Filled with guilt, she then took her own life at the biscuit factory.



As Humpty’s murder becomes tangled in a web of financial intrigue and jealous lovers, it attracts the attention of Freidland Chymes, who knows a case of “good copy” when he sees it. Chymes tries to hijack the investigation as fodder for another glossy crime story, but Jack withstands his rival’s various threats, soldiering on with his inquiries.

Solomon Grundy, the CEO of Winsum and Loosum, is another “person of interest” in the case. To their surprise, Jack and Mary meet a beautiful woman with 28-foot-length hair at Grundy’s residence. He introduces her as his wife, Rapunzel. More surprising still is Grundy’s mystical, telepathic medium, the ”Sacred Gonga.” Encased in glass in a high-security room, the Gonga transmits unspoken thoughts between those who stand, shoe-less, in its presence.

As Jack’s boss, Superintendent Briggs, presses him to wrap up the investigation, Jack advances one solution after another. Perhaps the eccentric Horatio Carbuncle, a dabbler in verruca breeding, murdered Humpty because of his financial support for a company committed to eradicating verrucae. This theory collapses when Carbuncle himself is killed. Maybe Solomon Grundy shot down Humpty because of his apparent tryst with Rupunzel, but Jack is doubtful.



Meanwhile, Humpty’s car is found. It’s been wired to explode, in yet another perplexing scheme to slay the egg.

Jack settles on Spongg as Humpty’s murderer, reasoning that the footcare tycoon coveted Humpty’s enormous verruca. Clearly, Spongg planned to place the verruca under the floor in Grundy’s house. As barefoot people flocked to the Gonga, the verucca would infect the floor, and also their feet, thus creating demand for Spongg’s products. Jack’s suspicions are semi-confirmed when he returns to Spongg “Castle,” and Lola, Spongg’s lover, admits they wired Humpty’s car. They try to kill Jack, but he escapes.

In other news, the NCD forensics unit determines the fractures in Humpty’s egg are consistent with hatching, and Mrs. Spratt’s discarded beans have burgeoned into a towering beanstalk. The Jellyman, the “God-like” leader of the UK, arrives to admire the beanstalk. Suddenly, the hatched Humpty-Beast appears, along with Dr. Quatt, who reveals she used Humpty to spawn the beast for the purpose of killing the Jellyman. When the beast lunges at the Jellyman, Jack and Mary spring into action, ultimately dispatching Quatt and her creature by felling the beanstalk on them.



Several of the characters in The Big Over Easy originally appeared in Fforde’s series featuring literary detective Thursday Next. The Fourth Bear, the sequel to Big Over Easy, was published in 2006.