The Big Over Easy
First edition (UK) | |
| Author | Jasper Fforde |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Series | Nursery Crimes |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Hodder & Stoughton |
Publication date | 11 July 2005 |
| Publication place | UK |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | 0-340-83567-2 (UK Hardback) |
| OCLC | 58828122 |
| Followed by | The Fourth Bear |
The Big Over Easy is a 2005 novel written by Jasper Fforde. It features Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his assistant, Sergeant Mary Mary.
It is set in an alternate reality similar to that of his previous books: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten.
According to Fforde, The Big Over Easy is the result of the book Caversham Heights featured in The Well of Lost Plots. The book also includes a cameo of Thursday Next related to when she fixed a temporal distortion in The Eyre Affair.
The book was the first novel Fforde wrote in 1994, however it was rejected numerous times before it got published in 2005. It was massively re-written following the success of the Thursday Next novels. A follow-up, entitled The Fourth Bear, was published in July 2006.
The book is satirical, based on many nursery rhymes, fables, and the like. The main character Jack Spratt is based on Jack Sprat, and the secondary character is Mary Mary, both from nursery rhymes. They investigate events such as the Three Little Pigs and Humpty Dumpty. People from such sources are known in the book as a Person of Dubious Reality (PDR).