The Fourth Bear

Detective Jack Spratt and Sergeant Mary Mary are back on the case in THE FOURTH BEAR, the second book in the inspired and always surprising Nursery Crime series.
The Gingerbreadman-psychopath, sadist, genius, convicted murderer and cookie-is loose in the streets of Reading. But Jack Spratt doesn't get the case. He and Mary Mary have been demoted to Missing Persons because of Jack's poor judgment involving the poisoning of Mr. Bun the baker. Missing Persons looks like a boring assignment until a chance encounter at the oddly familiar Deja Vu Hotel leads the pair into the hunt for missing journalist Henrietta "Goldy" Hatchett, star reporter for "The Mole." The last witnesses to see her alive were the three bears, comfortably living out a life of rural solitude in Andersen's Wood.
But all is not as it seems. How could the bears' porridge be at such disparate temperatures when it was poured at the same time? Was there a fourth bear? And if there was, who was he, and why did he try to disguise Goldy's death as a freak accident?
Jack answers all these questions, and a few others besides, in THE FOURTH BEAR, another ingenious caper from the master of the rollicking literary romp, Jasper Fforde.