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Despite the fact that this novel is cleverly written with good measures of wit and satire, it was a strain to read.

It would sit there on my desk, I'd read a little, throw it down and force myself back to it at a later date. Reading the entire book took approximately three weeks, such was its burdensome obligation.

This certainly isn't a book I'd choose from a bookshop myself. One look at the cover would have been enough to put me off and the contents, a macabre adventure in Toycity, left me wondering what it was supposed to be about. Political and social analogies may have lurked in the pages but I wasn't (or didn't want to be) astute enough to discern their existence let alone meaning.

Anyway, I don't like Toytown or Toycity stories, child or adult notwithstanding and inserting a lot of fairy tale characters only made it worse for me.

Apart from the fact that I found the contents too silly to be bothered with, books like this take up valuable time which would be better spent reading, say, the workshop manual for a 1967 Ford Anglia.

The main problem was my lack of empathy for any of the characters. Most novels do have characters that you can identify with, even to a little extent and, if this isn't possible, sympathy is always there to make you care about their fates.

Nobody I know gives a damn about nursery rhyme characters, regardless of how they are portrayed and it's a sure fire bet that none of us identify with them. In fact, quite the reverse is possible. Think back to primary school where the local fat boy was called Humpty Dumpty and the quiet little girl, Little Bo Peep.

And there were usually a Jack and Jill lurking about: you know the pair who went up a hill somewhere in our vicinity with Jack coming down minus half a crown and Jill without her virginity. (I think that's how it went.)

This book commences with Jack making his way to the city. After escaping the clutches of a cannibalistic farmer, he takes a horse and ends up in a diner where the chef is a wooden man. The next encounter is with an alcohol-soaked teddy bear called Eddie and this is where I threw the book down for the first time.

A serial killer is doing nasty deeds about the city. Humpty Dumpty, a rich egg from the copyright proceedings of his nursery rhyme, is hard-boiled in his own swimming pool while Little Boy Blue has a shepherd's crook reverse thrusted through his digestive system. Nasty stuff!

Eddie and Jack investigate the killings and get into all sorts of trouble. Funny stuff? Some say he's a thinking man's Monty Python. I've been a Python fan for years but see very little similarity here. Incidentally, if you're looking for Mother Goose within the pages, she's a brothel keeper who gets her neck wrung. But who is this mystery killer?

Agatha Christie, eat your heart out - which she'd probably do in one of Rankin's novels. You'll have to read the book to find out.

Rankin is a well-known author with a big following and a large fan club. This far into the review you'll have guessed that I'm not included in his entourage. He has had well over twenty books published to date, including 'East of Ealing', 'Snuff Fiction' and 'The Brentford Chainstore Massacre'.

They are all of a similar nature. It's the stuff he writes and he makes a living out of it so why change a formula that seems to work? There seems to be lots of originality about his writing but it's a pity he can't apply himself to doing workshop manuals! In a website interview, he states he hasn't read any other fiction for twenty years! This makes him untainted by other influences.

If you are a fan of Robert Rankin and you think this material is for you, the special introductory price from the publisher makes purchasing a must! Appreciation of this book is just a matter of taste and one man's hollow chocolate bunnie is another man's poison.

The back cover shows a particularly mean picture of the author with dark sunglasses and a large, offensive drill. When about to write the review, I considered making up a piece of flattery so as to avoid me opening my door one day to find him there with gbh in mind.

Then I thought, the Men In Black are after me and they will probably get to me first.

Rod MacDonald