One of our Thursdays is missing

One of our Thursdays is missing by Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde's latest offering in the Thursday Next series is a metafictional tour de farce. The original Thursday -- literary police Special Operations Agent (ret.) and the star of her own series of novels-with-novels -- has disappeared, and it's up to her fictional character to find her by impersonating the real Thursday. There's a border dispute in BookWorld between the genres of Racy Novel and Women's Fiction, and if Thursday doesn'y show up for the peace talks, war might ensue. Fforde sprinkles his story with characters and allusions from the classics and popular fiction, and makes liberal use of puns including setting up whole subplots just for a punch line. His style is uncategorizable and nearly indescribable, at least not in a way that makes any sense, but irresistibly entertaining and uniquely inventive. This sequel refers back to things that happened (or didn't) in previous titles in the series, and it might help to start with the first installment, The Eyre Affair.