NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Enter the seedy underbelly of nursery crime, where characters are never as they seem, in this “brilliantly, breathlessly odd” (USA Today) novel from the renowned author of The Big Over Easy and the Thursday Next series.   “Like the best novels of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, Fforde goes beyond his genre.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review   “Jasper Fforde is able to write diabolically. . . . Outrageous satirical agility is his stock in trade.”—The New York Times Detective Jack Spratt and Sergeant Mary Mary long to collar the Gingerbreadman—psychopath, sadist, criminal genius, cookie—who’s at large in Reading. Instead, they’re demoted to searching for missing journalist Henrietta “Goldy” Hatchett. The last witnesses to see her alive were the reclusive three bears, and Jack thinks something’s odd about their story. How could that porridge be too hot, too cold, and just right if it was poured at the same time?   The question is: was there a fourth bear?