Jasper Fforde - Novels

Novels

Fforde published his first novel, The Eyre Affair, in 2001.

His published books include a series of novels starring the literary detective Thursday Next: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels, One of our Thursdays Is Missing and The Woman Who Died a Lot. The Eyre Affair had received 76 publisher rejections before its eventual acceptance for publication. Fforde won the Wodehouse prize for comic fiction in 2004 for The Well of Lost Plots.

The Big Over Easy (2005), set in the same alternative universe as the Next novels, is a reworking of his first written novel, which initially failed to find a publisher. Its original title was Who Killed Humpty Dumpty?, and later had the working title of Nursery Crime, which is the title now used to refer to this series of books. These books describe the investigations of DCI Jack Spratt. The follow-up to The Big Over Easy, The Fourth Bear, was published in July 2006 and focuses on Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Fforde's books are noted for their profusion of literary allusions and word play, tightly scripted plots, and playfulness with the conventions of traditional genres. His works usually contain various elements of metafiction, parody, and fantasy. None of his books has a chapter 13 except in the table of contents where there is a title of the chapter and a page number. In many of the books the page number is, in fact, the page right before the first page of chapter 14. However, in some the page number is just a page somewhere in chapter 12.

Shades of Grey, the first novel in a new series, was published December 2009 in the US and January 2010 in the UK. The sixth Thursday Next novel One of our Thursdays is Missing was published in February 2011, even though he only started writing the book on 1 December 2009.

Fforde also plans a third Nursery Crime novel, The Last Great Tortoise Race:

The Last Great Tortoise Race will be the third and final instalment of the NCD series. Current Publishing schedule: 2014.

In November 2010 he produced The Last Dragonslayer, unconnected with his other works but similar in style. The book is the first in a trilogy. The second book in the series, The Song of the Quarkbeast, was released in November 2011.