Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde

Something Rotten (2004) (Hodder)
Jasper Fforde
Grade: A-
Genre: fiction / crime / alternate reality
Source: own
Thursday Next: (1) The Eyre Affair, (2) Lost in a Good Book, (3) The Well of Lost Plots, (4) Something Rotten

TBR RBC 2015: A book by Jasper Fforde 

After two years as the ‘Bellman’, head of Jurisfiction in The Well of Lost Plots (the place where all fiction is written), Thursday has decided that she’s had enough. While the work keeps her busy and certainly keeps her busy, she needs to get back to the real world to get her husband, Landen, uneradicated by the mammoth Goliath corporation and let her son grow up in a world out of books. Tasked with acclimatising Hamlet to the real world, evading both her official stalker and the assassin trying to kill her, stopping a coup against President George Formby, trying to save all Danish books from a terrible fate and preventing the end of the world with an awesome game of Superhoop, will Thursday ever have time to fix her own troubles?

The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

The Well of Lost Plots (2003) (Hodder)
Jasper Fforde
Grade: B+
Genre: fiction / crime / alternate reality
Source: own
Thursday Next: (1) The Eyre Affair, (2) Lost in a Good Book, (3) The Well of Lost Plots

General RBC 2015: A funny book 

Former literary detective Thursday Next has recently taken up residence in the Well of Lost Plots, the place where all fiction is created. In the real world, the evil Goliath Corporation want her dead and she needs to think about the safety of her unborn child. Settling in to Cavendish Heights, an unpublished novel of dubious quality, this is the perfect time for Thursday to consider how she’s going to approach single-parenthood and how she can reverse Goliath’s eradication of her husband, Landen. Amidst training with Miss Havisham to become a Jurisfiction agent and saving Cavendish Heights from a disastrous future, Thursday realises that something is seriously wrong in the Well and must work out who she can trust, and who wants her dead …

Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde

Lost in a Good Book (2002) (Hodder)
Jasper Fforde
Grade: B+
Genre: fiction / crime / alternate reality
Source: own
Thursday Next: (1) The Eyre Affair, (2) Lost in a Good Book, (3) The Well of Lost Plots

Fiction RBC 2014: The second book in a series 

Having just married the man of her dreams (after a very lengthy estrangement) and concluded the biggest case of her career as an operative in the Literary Detectives division (rescuing the fate of Jane Eyre from the hands of criminal mastermind Acheron), Thursday Next is ready for a little less excitement in her life. Adventure, however, is more than happy to find her and turn Thursday’s life inconveniently upside-down.

In a puzzling string of events, it becomes clear that Landon, Thursday’s newly-wed husband of just four weeks, drowned as a toddler thirty-eight years ago and no one other than Thursday has any memory of history being otherwise. The threatening Goliath corporation wants Thursday to rescue their operative Jack Schitt from the poem in which she’d trapped him, and are willing to go to any lengths to fulfil their goals. Thursday begins a mission to discover the truth while evading interviews and the press, trying to keep out of Goliath's clutches and going on a series of new literary adventures ...

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

The Eyre Affair (2001) (Hodder and Stoughton)
Jasper Fforde
Grade: A
Genre: the rag-bag of genres as described below
Source: own, World Book Night edition
Thursday Next: (1) The Eyre Affair, (2) Lost in a Good Book, (3) The Well of Lost Plots

The year is 1985, the Crimean War is still waging on, dodos are in fashion, the public have a fascination with all things literary, and characters from Great English works of literary fiction are in great peril …

Thursday Next is a Crimean War veteran and a member of Special Ops 27: Literary Detectives. Her speciality is Shakespeare and her idea of an exciting day at work would be apprehending a group of literary fraudsters. When a first-edition of Martin Chuzzlewit goes missing, Thursday is put on the case as she designed the security designed to protect the work in the first place. She’s on the trail of Acheron, her former English lecturer at Swindon and a man whose name her superiors don’t dare to even utter. It is said that he knows whenever his name is said, and that no bullet can stop him …