The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
ISBN-10: 034073356X
ISBN-13: 978-0340733561
Paperback publication 2001

Thursday Next is a Literary Detective and a good one at that. In a world where literary crime is a major offence and time can be stopped, slowed down or changed by "revisionists" most things can happen. With the Crimean War ongoing and feral Dodo's in the parks, this is a very different world. Our heroine, Thursday, works in London rooting out fake Shakespeare texts and trying and failing to find a boyfriend who can live up to someone in her past. The novel begins with the theft of the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewhit with no one recorded on the CCTV and the beginnings of the pursuit of a man named Acheron Hades who used to be Thursday's lecturer.

Fforde takes us into a world which is very similar to ours but with big differences, however he creates this world with such ease and fills it with fascinating characters such as Colonel Next, Thursday's father, who can stop time but has been eradicated from existence after going rogue, Mycroft, Thursday's inventor uncle who manages to make the most amazing inventions but can occasionally get things a little muddled and literary characters who can leave their books and come into the "real" world.

Fforde has written a book that you will not want to put down. And in fact makes you want to go straight to the second book (Lost In A Good Book). So far there are five Thursday Next books, with a sixth due next year.

I was given this book as a birthday present and three days later I ordered the second one. I had never heard of Fforde before, but I am glad to have been introduced to his work. Not only are they good for a first reading, but the second time around you notice other things. These are good literary books which anyone who has a basic knowledge of books will enjoy, not least for the explanation of who wrote Shakespeare's plays.