After a tough -and unique in the Bookworld history- strike to gain the same rights as the fictional characters, the nursery rhymes characters were allowed to take some days off in the unpublished Jack Spratt series books (See The well of the Lost Plots for more details). Nobody should have ever noticed this vacation place but Fforde's The Big Over Easy was massively rewritten after Thursday Next's intervention -as part of the character exchange programme- and was finally published.

Jack Spratt is since the head of the Nursery Crime Division in Reading, Berkshire. The acquittal of the three little pigs in their prosecution for murder against Mr Wolff has put a great pressure on him: Jack faces the possibility that the NCD may be disbanded if he can't show good (and fast) results on his next case.

Humpty Dumpty was found smashed at the bottom of his favourite wall. Suicide? Humpty Dumpty was always depressed around the Easter period but something does not fit. Why had he recently spent loads of gold to buy shares of the dying Spongg Footcare company? And where came that gold from?

If you want to know if Prometheus will be extradited from England to Olympus after his impressive escape, if NCD can make the headlines of Amazing Crime Stories or Sleuth Illustrated, or if Jack the giant killer also fancies beanstalks, read The Big Over Easy.

By the way, if you ever wanted to know the real reason why Goldilocks was in the three bears' cottage, or why the three porridge bowls were at such disparate temperature when they were poured at the same time, I suggest you also read The Fourth Bear, the second Jack Spratt novel.