The Big Over Easy

The Big Over Easy is a novel written by Jasper Fforde and published in 2005. 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 and includes a possible cameo appearance of the author's heroine Thursday Next, thus verifying this claim.The book was the first novel Fforde wrote, however, he failed in its publication. 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 PDRs, "persons of dubious reality".