One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (Jasper Fforde) - Viking/Penguin - 2011 - 267 pages

Do not try to read this novel unless you have successfully read one of the previous five novels in the "Thursday Next" series (The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten & First Among Sequels).  In an alternate universe, Ms. Next is a Jurisfiction agent who travels through literature to restore continuity and proper endings for works of fiction, especially the classics.  In this volume, the real Thursday is missing and her written self is racing through genres in BookWorld to find her before the leader of the Racy Novel genre can take control of the metaphor stream.  Along the way, she rescues a duplex-5, cog-style robot from the Conspiracy genre and he becomes her faithful companion and butler for the adventure.  This is the most complicated of the Thursday Next series and is for book lovers only. [JAM 3/16/2011]