Book Review: One of Our Thursdays is Missing

By Sandy Amazeen Feb 27, 2011, 21:05 GMT

The newest tour de force from The New York Times bestselling author of Thursday Next and Shades of Grey. Jasper Fforde\'s exuberant return to the fantastical BookWorld opens during a time of great unrest. All-out Genre war is rumbling, and the BookWorld desperately needs a heroine like Thursday Next. But with the real Thursday apparently retired to the Realworld, the Council of Genres turns to the written Thursday. ...more

A witty, pun-filled stroll through the literary world awaits readers within the latest installment to the Thursday Next series that finds Bookworld remade and the heroine attempting to live a decent life while avoiding the grim sentence of being remaindered. A longstanding border dispute between Racy Novel, Women’s Fiction and Dogma was escalating into a genre war and literary detective Thursday Next was supposed to broker a truce. A week before negotiations, Thursday Next abruptly disappeared, possibly into Realworld but quite possibly the victim of a wicked plot. Her namesake is tapped to investigate an unrelated crime and she soon uncovers a sinister plot but can she dodge the Men in Plaid set on killing her long enough to thwart it.

With places like Our Blessed Lady of the Lobster, a designated love interest and diabolical wordplays, puns and hilarious illustrations including one captioned “Don’t anyone move…I think we’ve driven into a mimefield” complete with a license plate reading ISBN, this madcap tale delivers great good fun. Newcomers to the series should start with one of the earlier titles while fans will revel in Fforde’s fiendishly twisted literary world.