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The Fourth Bear A Nursery Crime Jasper Fforde Books

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The Fourth Bear A Nursery Crime Jasper Fforde Books

I love Jasper Fforde; I read and re-read him. But I regret to say that the U.S. Penguin edition of The Fourth Bear is not Jasper Fforde: it is evidently the work of a ham-handed Americanizing editor: ironically enough, a genuine 'fiction infraction.' I find myself on virtually every page having to mentally reconstruct what Jasper must actually have written, rather than attending to what I'm reading, which is very distracting. For example, there is an extended joke concerning the Gingerbreadman, as to whether he is a 'cookie or a cake' -- an obvious reference to the famous tax dispute about McVitie's Jaffa Cakes, as to whether they were biscuits or cakes. The joke is lost in the translation to 'cookie.' I don't have a copy of the UK edition to compare, but unless he chose for some bizarre reason of his own to write the entire book in American, Mr. Fforde could *not* have written cringe-worthy phrases like 'every food store and gas station in town' or 'underground parking lot' (a phrase that makes no sense in either dialect). If you want to read the unBowdlerized Jasper, I suggest buying the UK edition; that's what I plan to do.


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The Fourth Bear A Nursery Crime Jasper Fforde Books Reviews

Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and Detective Sergeant Mary Mary return in their second adventure by author Jasper Fforde, which builds off the events of "The Big Over Easy" while at the same time avoiding repeating the chief themes of that novel. Fforde has conjured up an elaborate fantastical world in this series of novels, and it is a delight to return to it (he has spoken of a third and final "Nursery Crime" story at some point in the future, which I highly anticipate).

Solving the murder of Humpty Dumpty made Jack Spratt famous, but, as the new book opens, he has fallen somewhat, thanks to a couple of botched operations, most notably his failure in the Red Riding Hood case, which left both Red and her grandmother catatonic. He is told to attend a psychiatric evaluation, which he fervently would rather avoid, even as a young reporter with golden hair turns up dead at a Battle of the Somme theme park ("Somme World", which is designed to mortify anyone who goes there), hours after she was discovered naked in bed at the Bruin household. Who killed Goldilocks, and why? Included here are, among other amusing details, the reasons why the story of the smallest bowl being 'just right' doesn't hold water, and what that indicates.

Fforde is not content to hit the same notes that made "The Big Over Easy" so entertaining, which some may see as a negative, depending on what you think about what he chooses to replace it with. The first novel made a great deal of the fictional unverse's obsession with 'true crime' stories, and the effect this had on police procedure, but this angle is more or less absent from "The Fourth Bear". There is no sense that the characters are spending their time trying to be more dramatic; Briggs, Jack's police captain, has seemingly gone from a self-aware parody of the trope where police captains are always suspending their officers to merely another example of that trope played straight (albeit with every referring to "Plot Device Number _" in reference to various strategies and situations they find themselves in). Playing the story a bit more straight adds a bit more straight-up drama to the story, though Fforde has not toned down his trademark irreverence one bit.

This approach also allows for some real exploration of the characters in a non-satirical context, and both Jack and Mary get a lot of good development here. Jack's concerns one of the intriguing new angles Fforde introduces here a more thorough explanation of the existence of 'fictional' characters in the 'real' world, and how they differ from normal humans. Jack is a 'PDR' (Person of Dubious Reality), but seems to be fairly well-adjusted, while he is able to call out his psychiatrist on being a threadbare plot device who has no backstory or memories otuside what the author has supplied her with (which is emotionally devastating).

Fforde casts his net quite wide in terms of source material, reeling in not just Southey's characters but far more obscure ones such as Mr and Mrs. Punch (British puppets who I suspect non-Brits such as myself will find rather mystifying); and the entire mystery revolves around various figures from Edward Lear's "The Quangle Wangle's Hat", which I had never heard of before, but numerous important plot details are drawn from it (one might consider reading that poem before reading this).

All in all, another winner from Fforde.
This is the second Nursery Crime I've had the pleasure of reading. The quirky style and reiteration of beloved characters of tales, folklore, myth, and childhood staples have grown up and, for the most part, assimilated into a modern-day world, unbeknownst to some of their fictional roles until it is often times too late. An easy and entertaining book that can put a smile on your face. Don't expect literary fiction for this four star. It's four star for what it is, fun.
The Fourth Bear is subtitled A Nursery Crime, and, yes, there are many word plays and allusions throughout this book. For anyone growing up with fairy tales and nursery rhymes, this is fun.

Our main character is Jack Spratt—yes, that Jack Sprat whose first wife died of complications from obesity. Now he is trying to live a normal human life—hence, the new spelling of his name—rather than his previous life as a PDR, Person of Dubious Reality.

Any fan of detective stories knows that the good detective picks up on anomalies—like Sherlock Holmes noting that the dog did not bark. So it is with the story of the Three Bears. If the bears were having a meal together, the porridges would have all been cooked in one pot and served at the same time. The three bowls should have all been the same temperature, or nearly so. Why was Papa’s too hot, Mama’s too cold, and Baby’s in between? And why was Goldilocks murdered?

We get appearances from the Quangle Wangle, the Gingerbread Man (a serial criminal who taunts the police with “You can’t catch me”), Dorian Grey (a used car salesman with an unusual guarantee), Madeleine Usher, a space alien, some scientists from Laputa, and others too numerous to mention. This book is a hoot.
I love Jasper Fforde; I read and re-read him. But I regret to say that the U.S. Penguin edition of The Fourth Bear is not Jasper Fforde it is evidently the work of a ham-handed Americanizing editor ironically enough, a genuine 'fiction infraction.' I find myself on virtually every page having to mentally reconstruct what Jasper must actually have written, rather than attending to what I'm reading, which is very distracting. For example, there is an extended joke concerning the Gingerbreadman, as to whether he is a 'cookie or a cake' -- an obvious reference to the famous tax dispute about McVitie's Jaffa Cakes, as to whether they were biscuits or cakes. The joke is lost in the translation to 'cookie.' I don't have a copy of the UK edition to compare, but unless he chose for some bizarre reason of his own to write the entire book in American, Mr. Fforde could *not* have written cringe-worthy phrases like 'every food store and gas station in town' or 'underground parking lot' (a phrase that makes no sense in either dialect). If you want to read the unBowdlerized Jasper, I suggest buying the UK edition; that's what I plan to do.