The Fourth Bear is part of my 'Nursery Crime' series, pitting Jack Spratt and Mary Mary of the NCD (Nursery Crime Division) of the Reading Police Department against traditional nursery stories.
From the blurb on my website:
Ever wondered why Mummy bear and Daddy Bear slept in separate beds? Ever pondered over the real reason Goldilocks was in the bear's house that morning? Ever racked your brains over the thermodynamic impossibilties of simultaneous porridge pouring? You did? Then hold onto your porridge spoon for: |
| The Fourth Bear |
The Gingerbreadman: Psychopath, sadist, genius, convicted murderer and biscuit is loose in the streets of Reading. It isn't Jack Spratt's case. He and Mary Mary have been reassigned due to falling levels of nursery crime, and The NCD is once more in jeopardy. That is, until a chance encounter during the Armitage Shanks literary awards at the oddly familiar Deja-Vu Club lead Jack and Mary on the hunt for missing journalist Henrietta 'Goldilocks' Hatchett, star reporter for The Daily Mole. She had been about to break a story involving unexplained explosions in Herefordshire, Pasadena and the Nullabor Plain; 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. How could the bear's porridge be at such disparate temperatures when they were poured at the same time? Was Goldy's death in the nearby 1st World War themepark of Sommeworld a freak accident? And is it merely chance that the Gingerbreadman pops up at awkward moments? But there's more. What does a missing scientist with a terrifying discovery in subatomic physics, a secret weapon of devastating power, a reclusive industrialist known only as the Quangle Wangle and Colonel Danvers of the National Security all have in common? |
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For news about everything regarding my books, I have a website at (www)jasperfforde(com) and am on Facebook, Threads, Instagram and Twitter using the handle ‘jasperfforde’
You can also find various musings and jotterings on Substack
Latest Publication: Red Side Story, UK Feb 2024, USA, May 2024
Next Publication: Dark Reading Matter, 2025.