Saturday, May 19, 2012

Over easy does it

Husband has reached chapter 5 in my novel. He said, 'Does it get better?'
He tried to explain it away by saying, 'Well, I'm familiar with the things that are happening; do other things happen?' but it was too late. I will remind him of what he said when I am rich and famous ...


Like Jasper Fforde. I avoided his books for a long time because they looked a bit weird and I thought they'd be hard to read. It turns out they're not weird at all if you can accept that nursery rhyme and literary characters exist in today's world. If you can get past that then they're just detective stories and good ones at that. Very funny and clever in a proper way, not in the way the Sunday broadsheet critics mean i.e. way above my head.


I've read two in the Nursery Crimes Division series: The Big Over Easy and The Fourth Bear and I'd like to share my favourite line from each book. We borrowed The Fourth Bear from the library and I don't have it now so I can only give you my version of the line. It's so obvious it's amazing that it hasn't been used before, in fact, it probably has but I've not heard it. Anyway it goes something like this:
'Constable Smith is in hospital and he's critical.'
'Critical?!'
'Yes, the food's terrible and the bed's hard.'


Then in The Big Over Easy, Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and Sergeant Mary Mary are investigating a murder and the victim's girlfriend says, 'I've loved him, Inspector, like no woman ever loved an egg before.' (Yes, Humpty Dumpty's the victim and you would not believe what happened to him!)

3 comments:

Leslie: said...

rotflol

Katney said...

Did he fall?

Or was he pushed?

Liz Hinds said...

Katney, neither!