First in a series about the Nursery Crimes Division, this is an extended joke on the theme of nursery rhymes, fairy tales and the police procedural crime novel, in a world where detectives are approved more for their ability to develop an interesting narrative, written up by their Official Sidekicks, rather than doing actual police work, and the temptation to embelish leads to exaggeration and even 'fixing' of results. In such a world, honest Jack Spratt (who eats no fat, of course), head of the NCD, stands out and is ridiculed and threatened with his division's closure, while his enemy, the top detective Chymes Friedland tries to engineer his downfall. Friedland wants a plum case - the demise of Humpty Dumpty - and does everything possible to discredit Spratt to get it transferred to him, even though he normally belittles the nature of NCD cases and so it is a mystery why he wants it, something never explained. 
 Lots of nursery rhyme characters appear and the odd fairy tale one such as Rapunzle. There are a few other characters, though refreshingly after the Thursday Next punning ones, some have normal names such as Briggs. I didn't find the world in which this is set quite as wearing either, since it doesn't have time travel/travel into books/constant overload of nutty happenings. Although it vaguely fits into the same universe as the Thursday Next books - at one point, Spratt's DC is driving and pulls out into a road whereupon she is hooted at by a colourful sports car which readers of the (I think second) Thursday Next novels may remember happened from Thursday's perspective - she hooted at a car that pulled out and steered round it - there isn't the everpresent Goliath Corporation and weird inventions etc that are such a fixture of the Next novels. This series is more 'normal' in that respect and takes its form from the police procedural genre albeit with magic beanstalk and other fantasy features. The main issue with it is that it does go on a bit too long, with a lot of repetition of Spratt and his DC Mary Mary going to see various people and interviewing them, and then working out a bit more of the case - I know that is the genre but it did seem rather slow in development. As with the Next books, none of the characters are 'real', with the possible exception of Jack who has a bit more development with a home life shown, wife, children and lodger, though he still isn't very convincing as a real person. 
 In short, the book is a lightweight entertaining read - some of the funniest bits are the extracts from faked up publications which head the chapters - but not a keeper and I'm not interested enough to read another in the series.