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    The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde

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The Fourth Bear

The Fourth Bear
A Nursery Crime
by Jasper Fforde
Published in USA Aug 2006,
382 pages.

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BOOK SUMMARY

Jack Spratt and Mary Mary take on their most dangerous case so far as a murderous cookie stalks the streets of Reading. The Gingerbreadman—psychopath, sadist, genius, and killer—is on the loose. But it isn’t Jack Spratt’s case. He and Mary Mary have been demoted to Missing Persons following Jack’s poor judgment involving the poisoning of Mr. Bun the baker. Missing Persons looks like a boring assignment until a chance encounter leads them into the hunt for missing journalist Henrietta “Goldy” Hatchett, star reporter for The Daily Mole. Last to see her alive? The Three Bears, comfortably living out a life of rural solitude in Andersen’s wood.

But all is not what it seems. How could the bears’ porridge be at such disparate temperatures when they were poured at the same time? Why did Mr. and Mrs. Bear sleep in separate beds? Was there a fourth bear? And if there was, who was he, and why did he try to disguise Goldy’s death as a freak accident? Jack answers all these questions and a few others besides, rescues Mary Mary from almost certain death, and finally meets the Fourth Bear and the Gingerbreadman face-to-face.


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Media Reviews

"As Jack and his associates "bring justice to the nursery world," they also cast a Swiftian eye on corporate hubris, race relations, the drug trade and myriad other targets." - PW.

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Sadly, despite being fans of Fforde's Thursday Next series, and to some extent the first in the Nursery Crime series, we were left rather cold by The Fourth Bear.


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