Thursday Next is an agent working for the British Special Operations law enforcement agency in an alternate world where England and Russia are still fighting the Crimean War, where Wales is an independent country, and where time travel is possible.

The people of this 1985 England love their literature. They are so passionate that literary arguments sometimes erupt into riots and a special government police department exists solely to deal with crimes of literature. Thursday works for this department.

In The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, Thursday's uncle Mycroft invents a machine that allows people and characters to travel in and out of fictional books. If one enters a book and changes the plot, the story in the actual book changes. If this happens in an original manuscript, every copy of that book is modified. The Villainous Hades kidnaps Mycroft, steals the machine and some original literary classic manuscripts; then blackmails England, threatening to kill characters in the book, destroying England's most beloved literature. And only Thursday can stop him.
 
If you think this sounds like some serious suspension of disbelief, you'd be right. If you think it sounds somewhat silly, you are right about that as well. This novel is filled with weird science and over-the-top characters with names like Braxton Hicks and Jack Schitt. But it works. And not just as satire and humor. Although the story never takes itself too seriously, it never falls into the completely absurd, as with authors like Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett.

The Eyre Affair is a silly, adventure, detective, sci-fi, comedy story filled with action and memorable characters.

I loved it.