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Fforde, Jasper / Ффорде, Джаспер - Собрание сочинений (17 произведений) [2002-2021, fb2/epub, ENG]

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Jasper Fforde / Джаспер Ффорде - Собрание сочинений

Годы выпуска: 2002-2021 г.
Автор: Fforde, Jasper / Ффорде, Джаспер
Язык: Английский
Формат: fb2/epub
Качество: OCR/eBook

Описание:
Джаспер Ффорде (Jasper Fforde, фонетически правильное произношение валлийской фамилии — Форд, но в переводах его книг на русский язык закрепилось транслитерационное написание «Ффорде»; род. 11 января 1961) — британский писатель.
Первый роман Ффорде, The Eyre Affair (Дело Джен, или Эйра немилосердия), был издан в 2001 году. Наибольшей популярностью пользуется серия его романов о Thursday Next (Четверг Нонетот). Другие три цикла: Nursery Crimes (Отдел Сказочных Преступлений), Shades of Grey и Last Dragonslayer (детский).
Книги Ффорде характеризуются обилием литературных аллюзий, игры слов, захватывающим сюжетом и полной невозможностью определения жанра произведения, и включают в себя элементы метапрозы, пародии и фэнтези. Также Джаспер известен своими попытками инкорпорировать читателей в развитие мира «Thursday Next» посредством форума на своём сайте ThursdayNext.com, на котором уже сформировалось небольшое сообщество энтузиастов.
01 The Eyre Affair / Дело Джен, или Эйра немилосердия 2003, fb2, ISBN: 0-14-200180-5, Penguin; 2004, epub, eISBN: 978-1-1011-5851-7, Viking
02 Lost in a Good Book / Беги, Четверг, беги, или Жесткий переплет 2002, fb2, ISBN: 0-340-82283-X, Hodder & Stoughton
03 The Well of Lost Plots / Кладезь Погибших Сюжетов, или Марш генератов 2003, fb2
04 Something Rotten / Неладно что-то в нашем королевстве, или Гамбит Минотавра 2004, fb2
05 First Among Sequels / Апокалипсис Нонетот, или Первый среди сиквелов 2007, fb2, ISBN: 978-0-670-03871-8, Viking
06 One of Our Thursdays is Missing 2011, fb2, ISBN: 978-0-670-02252-6; epub, eISBN: 978-1-101-47600-0, Viking
07 The Woman Who Died a Lot 2012, epub, eISBN: 978-1-444-70933-9, Hodder & Stoughton
A Thursday Next Digital Collection 2007, epub, Penguin
01 The Eyre Affair / Дело Джен, или Эйра немилосердия
02 Lost in a Good Book / Беги, Четверг, беги, или Жесткий переплет
03 The Well of Lost Plots / Кладезь Погибших Сюжетов, или Марш генератов
04 Something Rotten / Неладно что-то в нашем королевстве, или Гамбит Минотавра
05 First Among Sequels / Апокалипсис Нонетот, или Первый среди сиквелов
01 The Big Over Easy / Тайна выеденного яйца, или Смерть Шалтая 2005, fb2; 2006, epub, ISBN: 1-101-15830-1, Penguin
02 The Fourth Bear 2006, fb2; 2007, epub, ISBN: 1-101-15852-2, Viking
The Locked Room Mystery mystery / Тайна Запертой Комнаты 2007, fb2
01 Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron / Полный вперед назад, или Оттенки серого 2009, fb2/epub, ISBN: 978-1-101-15965-1, Viking
01 The Last Dragonslayer 2010, fb2; epub, eISBN: 978-1-444-70719-9, Hodder & Stoughton
02 The Song of the Quarkbeast 2011, fb2/epub, ISBN: 978-1-4447-0724-3, Hodder & Stoughton
03 The Eye of Zoltar 2014, epub, ISBN: 978-1-4447-0729-8, Hodder & Stoughton
04 The Great Troll War 2021, epub (retail), ISBN: 978-1-4447-9995-8, Hodder & Stoughton
Early Riser 2019, epub (retail), ISBN: 978-0-698-17034-6, Viking
The Constant Rabbit 2020, epub (retail), ISBN: 978-1-4447-6365-2, Hodder & Stoughton


For my father John Standish Fforde (1921-2000)
Who never knew I was to be published but would have been most proud nonetheless—and not a little surprised
1. A woman named Thursday Next


… The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialised to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane Neighbourly Disputes (SO-20) and going on to Literary Detectives (SO-27) and Art Crime (SO-24). Anything below SO-2O was restricted information, although it was common knowledge that the ChronoGuard were SO-12 and Antiterrorism SO-9. It is rumoured that SO-1 was the department that polices the SpecOps themselves. Quite what the others do is anyone’s guess. What is known is that the individual operatives themselves are mostly ex-military or ex-police and slightly unbalanced. ‘If you want to be a SpecOp,’ the saying goes, ‘act kinda weird…’
-Millon de Floss. A Short History of the Special Operations Network
My father had a face that could stop a clock. I don’t mean that he was ugly or anything; it was a phrase the ChronoGuard used to describe someone who had the power to reduce time to an ultra-slow trickle. Dad had been a colonel in the ChronoGuard and kept his work very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that we didn’t know he had gone rogue at all until his timekeeping buddies raided our house one morning clutching a Seize & Eradication order open-dated at both ends and demanding to know where and when he was. Dad had remained at liberty ever since; we learned from his subsequent visits that he regarded the whole service as ‘morally and historically corrupt’ and was fighting a one-man war against the bureaucrats within the Office for Special Temporal Stability. I didn’t know what he meant by that and still don’t; I just hoped he knew what he was doing and didn’t come to any harm doing it. His skills at stopping the clock were hard-earned and irreversible: he was now a lonely itinerate in time, belonging to not one age but to all of them and having no home other than the chronoclastic ether.
I wasn’t a member of the ChronoGuard. I never wanted to be. By all accounts it’s not a huge barrel of laughs, although the pay is good and the service boasts a retirement plan that is second to none: a one-way ticket to anywhere and anywhen you want. No, that wasn’t for me. I was what we called an ‘Operative Grade I’ for SO-27, the Literary Detective Division of the Special Operations Network based in London. It’s way less flash than it sounds. Since 1980 the big criminal gangs had moved in on the lucrative literary market and we had much to do and few funds to do it with. I worked under Area Chief Boswell, a small, puffy man who looked like a bag of flour with arms and legs. He lived and breathed the job; words were his life and his love—he never seemed happier than when he was on the trail of a counterfeit Coleridge or a fake Fielding. It was under Boswell that we arrested the gang who were stealing and selling Samuel Johnson first editions; on another occasion we uncovered an attempt to authenticate a flagrantly unrealistic version of Shakespeare’s lost work, Gardenia. Fun while it lasted, but only small islands of excitement among the ocean of day-to-day mundanities that is SO-2y: we spent most of our time dealing with illegal traders, copyright infringements and fraud.
I had been with Boswell and SO-2y for eight years, living in a Maida Vale apartment with Pickwick, a regenerated pet dodo left over from the days when reverse extinction was all the rage and you could buy home cloning kits over the counter. I was keen—no, I was desperate— to get away from the LiteraTecs but transfers were unheard of and promotion a non-starter. The only way I was going to make full Inspector was if my immediate superior moved on or out. But it never happened; Inspector Turner’s hope to marry a wealthy Mr. Right and leave the service stayed just that—a hope—as so often Mr. Right turned out to be either Mr. Liar, Mr. Drunk or Mr. Already Married.
As I said earlier, my father had a face that could stop a clock; and that’s exactly what happened one spring morning as I was having a sandwich in a small cafe not far from work. The world flickered, shuddered and stopped. The proprietor of the cafe froze in mid-sentence and the picture on the television stopped dead. Outside, birds hung motionless in the sky. Cars and trams halted in the streets and a cyclist involved in an accident stopped in midair, the look of fear frozen on his face as he paused two feet from the hard asphalt. The sound halted too, replaced by a dull snapshot of a hum, the world’s noise at that moment in time paused indefinitely at the same pitch and volume.
‘How’s my gorgeous daughter?’
I turned. My father was sitting at a table and rose to hug me affectionately.
‘I’m good,’ I replied, returning his hug tightly. ‘How’s my favourite father?’
‘Can’t complain. Time is a fine physician.’
I stared at him for a moment.
‘Y’ know,’ I muttered, ‘I think you’re looking younger every time I see you.’
‘I am. Any grandchildren in the offing?’
‘The way I’m going? Not ever.’
My father smiled and raised an eyebrow.
‘I wouldn’t say that quite yet.’
He handed me a Woolworths bag.
‘I was in ‘78 recently,’ he announced. ‘I brought you this.’
He handed me a single by the Beatles. I didn’t recognise the title.
‘Didn’t they split in ‘70?’
‘Not always. How are things?’
‘Same as ever. Authentications, copyright, theft—‘
‘—same old shit?’
‘Yup.’ I nodded. ‘Same old shit. What brings you here?’
‘I went to see your mother three weeks ahead your time,’ he answered, consulting the large chronograph on his wrist. ‘Just the usual—ahem—reason. She’s going to paint the bedroom mauve in a week’s time—will you have a word and dissuade her? It doesn’t match the curtains.’
‘How is she?’
He sighed deeply.
‘Radiant, as always. Mycroft and Polly would like to be remembered, too.’
They were my aunt and uncle; I loved them deeply, although both were mad as pants. I regretted not seeing Mycroft most of all. I hadn’t returned to my home-town for many years and I didn’t see my family as often as I should.
‘Your mother and I think it might be a good idea for you to come home for a bit. She thinks you take work a little too seriously.’
‘That’s a bit rich, Dad, coming from you.’
‘Ouch—that—hurt. How’s your history?’
‘Not bad.’
‘Do you know how the Duke of Wellington died?’
‘Sure,’ I answered. ‘He was shot by a French sniper during the opening stages of the Battle of Waterloo. Why?’
‘Oh, no reason,’ muttered my father with feigned innocence, scribbling in a small notebook. He paused for a moment.
‘So Napoleon won at Waterloo, did he?’ he asked slowly and with great intensity.
‘Of course not,’ I replied. ‘Field Marshal Blьcher’s timely intervention saved the day.’
I narrowed my eyes.
‘This is all O-level history, Dad. What are you up to?’
‘Well, it’s a bit of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’
‘What is?’
‘Nelson and Wellington, two great English national heroes both being shot early on during their most important and decisive battles.’
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘That French revisionists might be involved.’
‘But it didn’t affect the outcome of either battle,’ I asserted. ‘We still won on both occasions!’
‘I never said they were good at it.’
‘That’s ludicrous!’ I scoffed. ‘I suppose you think the same revisionists had King Harold killed in 1066 to assist the Norman invasion!’
But Dad wasn’t laughing. He replied with some surprise: ‘Harold? Killed? How?’
‘An arrow, Dad. In his eye.’
‘English or French?’
‘History doesn’t relate,’ I replied, annoyed at his bizarre line of questioning.
‘In his eye, you say—? Time is out of joint,’ he muttered, scribbling another note.
‘What’s out of joint?’ I asked, not quite hearing him. ‘Nothing, nothing. Good job I was born to set it right—‘
‘Hamlet?’ I asked, recognising the quotation. He ignored me, finished writing and snapped the notebook shut, then placed his fingertips on his temples and rubbed them absently for a moment. The world joggled forward a second and refroze as he did so. He looked about nervously.
‘They’re on to me. Thanks for your help, Sweetpea. When you see your mother, tell her she makes the torches burn brighter—and don’t forget to try and dissuade her from painting the bedroom.’
‘Any colour but mauve, right?’
‘Right.’ He smiled at me and touched my face. I felt my eyes moisten; these visits were all too short. He sensed my sadness and smiled the sort of smile any child would want to receive from their father. Then he spoke:
‘For I dipped into the past, far as SpecOps twelve could see–‘
He paused and I finished the quote, part of an old ChronoGuard song Dad used to sing to me when I was a child.
‘—saw a vision of the world and all the options there could be!’
And then he was gone. The world rippled as the clock started again. The barman finished his sentence, the birds flew on to their nests, the television came back on with a nauseating ad for SmileyBurgers, and over the road the cyclist met the asphalt with a thud.
. . .


‘So who's the victim?’ asked Detective Inspector Jack Spratt, shaking his overcoat of the cold winter rain as he entered Usher Towers. ‘It's Locked Room Mystery,’ explained his amiable sidekick, Detective Sergeant Mary Mary. ‘He was found dead at 7.30pm. But get this: the library had been locked … from the inside.’
‘Locked Room killed inside a locked room, eh?’ murmured Spratt. ‘What was that tired old plot device doing out here anyway? I thought he was at the At the End of The Day retirement home for washed-up old cliches.’
‘It was the Mystery Contrivances Club annual dinner,’ explained Mary. ‘Locked Room was going to be given a long-service award—you know how they like to stick a gong on ideas before they die out completely. Last year it was the Identical Twins plot device.’
‘I always hated that one,’ said Jack.
They stepped into the spacious marble-lined entrance vestibule and a worried-looking individual ran up to them, wringing his hands in a desperate manner.
‘Inspector Spratt!’ he wailed. ‘This is a terrible business. You must help!’
‘Jack,’ said Mary, ‘meet Red Herring, president of the club and owner of Usher Towers.’
‘Perhaps you'd better show me the body,’ said Jack quietly, ‘and tell me what happened.’
‘Of course, of course,’ replied Red Herring, leading them across the vestibule to a large oak-panelled door. ‘We were about to present Locked Room with his award but he'd gone missing. We eventually found his body in the library. I swear, the room was locked, the windows barred, and there is no other entrance.’
‘Hmm,’ replied Spratt thoughtfully. ‘You knew him well?’
‘Locked Room and I have been friends for a long time,’ replied Red Herring, ‘despite the fact that he had an affair with my wife, fleeced me on a property deal in the 60s and has been secretly blackmailing me over my indiscretion with a Brazilian call girl named Conchita.’
‘Conchita, eh?’
‘Damn,’ said Herring. ‘You know about her?’
‘It's my business to know things,’ replied Spratt coolly, ‘I also know, for instance, that this mystery conforms to the Knox Convention.’
‘You mean—?’
‘Right,’ said Jack. ‘There's no chance of someone we've not mentioned turning out to have done it.’
‘That also rules us out as the detectives,’ added Mary, ‘and there must be clues.’
‘And in a story this short,’ continued Jack, ‘some of them might be in italics—so keep a sharp eye out.’
Jack turned back to Red Herring. ‘Who else was in the house at the time?’
Herring thought for a moment and counted the guests off on his fingers: ‘There was myself, Unshakeable Alibi, Cryptic Final Message, Least Likely Suspect, Overlooked Clue, and the butler, Flashback.’
Spratt thought for a moment. ‘Tell everyone to wait in the drawing room and we'll speak to them one by one without a lawyer present and in clear contravention of any accepted police procedures.’
Red Herring departed, and Jack and Mary ducked under the ‘Police line—do not cross’ tape into the library. They cautiously approached the desk where lay the corpse of the old lady, with her throat so entirely cut that, upon an attempt to raise her, the head fell off.
‘This MO seems somehow familiar,’ mused Spratt, looking around for a sharp object and finding nothing.
‘Definitely locked from the inside,’ added Mary, having made an impossibly rapid examination of the room. Luckily for them both, the dark-humoured pathologist stereotype was the guest of honour at the Mystery Contrivances Club dinner, and was able to give an improbably precise time of death.
‘About 7.02, give or take nine seconds,’ he said, munching on a sandwich.
The first suspect they spoke to was Unshakeable Alibi, who presented them with a photograph of herself taken earlier that evening—with a clock prominent in the background that read precisely 7.02.
‘You knew Locked Room well?’ asked Spratt.
‘We were both there right at the beginning with Poe's Dupin mysteries,’ she mused. ‘Strange as it may seem now, Inspector, Locked Room was once the brightest star of the genre. He said he was going to make a comeback, but it never happened—it was all a bit sad, to be honest.’
‘And you are?’ asked Jack as the next suspect walked in.
‘Cryptic Final Message,’ replied the man, raising his hat. ‘Locked Room scribbled this note earlier today—I found it in the waste-paper basket.’
Jack took the message and handed it to Mary.
‘Okay, intimate nectar,’ she read. ‘Could be an anagram.’
‘Impossible,’ replied Spratt. ‘The Guild of Detectives have banned all anagram-related clues since 1998—the same time we finally got rid of the ludicrous notion that albinos must always be homicidal lunatics.’
‘Well,’ purred Overlooked Clue, as she entered the room in a silk kimono. ‘Inspector Spratt—dahling—we meet again.’
‘Indeed,’ replied Jack. ‘You knew Locked Room?’
‘Of course,’ she replied, draping herself with a fashionably decadent air upon the chaise longue. ‘We were close, but not intimate. He taught me all I know about misdirection. I always keep his first story close to my heart. Dearly missed, Inspector, dearly missed.’
She sobbed and clasped a small volume of Poe short stories to her breast.
The next interviewee was Least Likely Suspect, a sweet old lady with white hair and clear blue eyes who spent her time gossiping and handing round photographs of her grandchildren. She asked Jack to hold a skein of wool so that she could wind some into a ball.
‘I'm so sorry about Locked Room,’ she said sadly. ‘The finish of the Golden Age hit him badly. He always claimed he would make a dramatic comeback in the Christmas supplement of a leading daily newspaper, but I suppose it's too late for that now.’
‘Perhaps not,’ murmured Jack, leaning gently against the fourth wall. ‘I take it that you are still gainfully employed in the mystery thriller industry?’
‘Me?’ giggled the old lady, ‘What possible harm could a little old—’
She had stopped talking because a pearl-handled revolver had slipped from her purse and fallen to the floor with a clatter.
‘I have a licence for that,’ she said quickly.
The next to be interviewed was Flashback the butler, who after taking them on an interesting but irrelevant excursion around a trivial incident in his childhood, gave no new information—except to say that Locked Room entered the library alone, and he heard the key being turned behind him.
‘Tell me,’ said Jack slowly. ‘Was he carrying a small volume of short stories with him?’
‘Why yes!’ replied Flashback, ‘it's … it's all coming back to me now.’
‘I was initially baffled by the lack of a murder weapon within the locked room,’ intoned Spratt when all the suspects were conveniently arranged in the drawing room a few minutes later, ‘but after due consideration, it makes sense. All of you had reason to kill him. Red Herring was blackmailing him, Unshakeable Alibi was nervous that she might be eclipsed by his planned comeback, Overlooked Clue was still in love with him and Least Likely Suspect wanted to stay employed for ever.’
They all looked nervously at one another as a log settled in the grate and sent a shower of sparks up the chimney.
‘That's right,’ said Jack, ‘the killer was …’

Answer: It had to be a suicide. Locked Room, unable to come to terms with the loss of his literary stardom, wanted to re-establish the tired contrivance to full prominence in a final, totally unsolvable locked room mystery that would be discussed on a million bulletin boards for all eternity. Sadly, unable to come up with a decent description of his own mutilated body, he borrowed it word for word from Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, his first and keynote appearance.

Keen-eyed as usual, Jack noticed that in his haste, Locked Room had forgotten to change genders on the description and had inadvertently left the quote italicised. It was the book that Flashback saw him with, and also the same one later retrieved by Overlooked Clue as a keepsake. The anagram on the suicide note handed to Last Cryptic Message read: ‘I can't take it any more.’ Red Herring was indeed a red herring, and Flashback's attendance was entirely irrelevant—I just liked the joke.
UPD Релиз обновлен 23.09.2023
Добавлено:
Новый роман
Fforde, Jasper - Early Riser - 2019.epub
Добавлено:
Fforde, Jasper - The Constant Rabbit - 2020.epub
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04 Fforde, Jasper - The Great Troll War (Dragonslayer) - 2021.epub
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OldOldNick

UPD Релиз обновлен 23.02.2019
Новый роман
Fforde, Jasper - Early Riser - 2019.epub

OldOldNick

UPD Релиз обновлен 14.10.2020
Добавлено:
Fforde, Jasper - The Constant Rabbit - 2020.epub

OldOldNick

UPD Релиз обновлен 23.09.2023
Добавлено:
04 Fforde, Jasper - The Great Troll War (Dragonslayer) - 2021.epub
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