Fforde, Jasper

(British, 1961– )

Fforde lives in Wales and worked in the film industry until the successful publication of his first novel, The Eyre Affair (2001). This is a comic fantasy detective novel, set in a parallel world where thieves kidnap characters from works of fiction and hold them to ransom, and where historical events can be altered through intervention in time. Literary detective Thursday Next is pitted against criminal mastermind Acheron Hades; she must restore Jane Eyre, halt the Crimean War, rescue her aunt from inside a poem, and persuade her future husband to marry her. Fforde has continued the winning formula with three further novels featuring Thursday's adventures. The best of these is The Well of Lost Plots (2003); Thursday and her pet dodo Pickwick visit the well where all plots languish until selected by an author; her guide is Miss Havisham.

Terry Pratchett, Lewis Carroll  JR