Fforde's books are more than an ingenious idea. They are written with buoyant zest and are tautly plotted. They have empathetic heroes and heroines who nearly make terrible mistakes and suitably dastardly villains who do. They also have more twists and turns than Christie,and are embellished with the rich details of a Dickens or Pratchett. As Humpty Dumpty's life-story is revealed, the mystery becomes curiouser and curiouser, and the compulsion to find out what is going on increases. A real treat.

It's Easter in Reading - a bad time For eggs - and the shattered, tuxedo-clad corpse oF local businessman Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III has been Found lyingbeneath a wall in a shabby part oF town. Humpty was one oF life s good guys - so who would want him knocked off？ And is it a coincidence that his ex-wife has just met with a sticky end down at the local biscuit Factory？

A hardened cop on the mean streets oF the Thames Valley s most dangerous precinct, DI Jack Spratt has seen it all, and something tells him this is going to be a tough case to crack...

1. Mary Mary

2. Jack Spratt

3. The Fall Guy

4. Mrs Hubbard, dogs & bones

5. Prometheus

6. Mrs Laura Dumpty

7. The Nursery Crime Division

8. The armoury

9. Back at the office

10. Charles Pewter

11. The Sacred Conga

12. St Cerebellum's

13. First on the right

14. Meeting the detective

15. Granny Spratt's displeasure

16. Mrs Singh turns the story

17. The enquiry begins

18. Lord Randolph Spongg IV

19. Solomon Grundy

20. Press conference

21. RIP Mrs Dumpty and 'the case . .. is dosed！'

22. Titans and beanstalks

23. Mary's doubts

24. Briggs v. Spratt

25. Goodnight, Wee Willie Winkie

26. Meet the Grundys

27. Perplexity, complexity

28. Castle Spongg

29. Lola Vavoom

30. Another press conference

31. Home sweet home

32. Giorgio Porgia

33. What Bessie Brooks had to say for herself

34. Investigated

35. Summing up

36. Refilling the jar

37. The man from the Guild

38. Lola Vavoom returns

39. The red Ford Zephyr

40. The Goring Foot Museum

41. Dr Horatio Carbuncle

42. Return to Castle Spongg

43. Loose ends

44. The end of the story