The Fourth Bear

Jasper Fforde writes with a zany brand of humor similar to the late Douglas Adams. In this book, we encounter a number of persons of dubious reality (PDRs). Luckily, the police have a nursery crimes division that helps solve crimes involving these characters. The lead character, Jack, is an officer of the nursery crimes division who happens to be a PDR himself. In the story, we get the gingerbread man as a genetically engineered master criminal, a "binary" space alien as a police force member, and all sorts of other bizarre characters. This book must have been a blast to write, and makes a great read.