This book spotlight is on The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde – one of my favourite books of the last couple of years.
Description: The 2nd title in the Nursery Crimes series. The Gingerbreadman – psychopath, sadist, convicted murderer and cake/biscuit – is loose on the streets of Reading. It isn’t Jack Spratt’s case. Despite the success of the Humpty Dumpty investigation, the well publicised failure to prevent Red Riding-Hood and her Gran being eaten once again plunges the Nursery Crime Division into controversy.
Enforced non-involvement with the Gingerbreadman hunt looks to be frustrating until a chance encounter at the oddly familiar Deja-Vu Club leads them onto the hunt for missing journalist Henrietta ‘Goldy’ Hatchett, star reporter for The Daily Toad. The last witnesses to see her alive were The Three Bears, comfortably living out a life of rural solitude in Andersen’s wood. But all is not what it seems.
Are the unexplained explosions around the globe somehow related to missing nuclear scientist Angus McGuffin? Is cucumber-growing really that dangerous? Why are National Security involved? But most important of all: How could the bears’ porridge be at such disparate temperatures when they were poured at the same time?
BookieMonster says: The Fourth Bear is my favourite Jasper Fforde book, which is saying quite a lot as my opinion of him is high. It continues and adds to the witty and satirical tone established in his better known Thursday Next series and the first Nursery Crimes title The Big Over Easy, and is a dive into a meta world of crime/mystery novels and nursery rhymes, much as Thursday Next does with classical tomes. Even if you can’t pick up every allusion or cultural reference (an almost impossible task on first read) it’s still a wildly entertaining read of itself. It also manages to be a thrilling mystery story, even for those like myself who aren’t big fans of the mystery genre.
It also made me laugh – a lot! 
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