Who killed Humpty Dumpty? Jasper Fforde gets to the bottom of this question in his new crime novel “The Big Over Easy” (Viking, 383 pages, $24.95), which he read from at Barnes & Noble Upper West Side on Monday. The book examines the “seedy underbelly of nursery crime” and features Detective Inspector Jack Spratt (of “eat no fat” fame) who leads the “Nursery Crime Division” in investigating the death of playboy philanthropist Humpty Dumpty, found shattered to pieces. Spratt is assisted by his sidekick, Sergeant Mary Mary.

Mr. Fforde’s playful book – the first in his “nursery crime” series – is a cross between Lewis Carroll and Ellery Queen. It imagines a world where nursery rhyme characters mix with danger. Mr. Fforde acknowledged to the audience that one of his inspirations was detective novelist Agatha Christie.

Mr. Fforde says in his writing he likes to “take fantasy and make it ordinary.” There have been literary sleuths before, but Mr. Fforde, in best sellers such as “The Eyre Affair” and “The Well of Lost Plots,” has made literature the very subject of his detective plots. Here he explores new vistas with children’s rhymes.

Mr. Fforde said he had the audiobook in mind when choosing names of characters that are virtually unpronounceable. But he then got a call from the producer of the audiobook, saying, “We want to talk about pronunciation.” Mr. Fforde told him to pronounce the names “any way you want.” But the producer replied, “No, you’re the author. You tell us how to pronounce it.”

Before reading from “The Big Over Easy,” Mr. Fforde opened with a kind of intellectual stand-up comedy. He said a lot of the world’s problems could be solved if teenagers read more Shakespeare. A good way to make Shakespeare attractive to teenagers, he said, would be to ban it from those under age 21. In addition, he suggested promoting Shakespeare by getting old, washed-up rock stars to talk about their experiences with the Bard: “I was doing Marlowe for years, and I went to this party, and someone was handing around these sonnets, and someone said, ‘Go on, take a line.’ Then I did two lines. In a week I was doing ‘Hamlet.'”

Mr. Fforde also told jokes about board games, such as playing the game Clue with a pacifist who never put the murder cards in the envelope: In the end, the players find out that nobody had been killed. He also joked about other entertainment for the new millennium, such as “bar code roulette,” in which one adds a line to the bar code in a supermarket and waits to see if it increases or decreases the price of the good purchased. Another game he cited was “camouflage pest,” which involves bumping into people wearing camouflage patterns and saying, “Sorry, I didn’t see you.”

***

VIEWS OF VACATIONLAND Painter Alex Katz signed copies of “Alex Katz in Maine” (Charta) on Tuesday at Artbook at Visionaire, a temporary summer bookstore on Mercer Street. The book accompanies an exhibition at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine. The show, running through October 16, surveys a half-century of Mr. Katz’s works relating to the Pine Tree State, where he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and has spent many summers.

The artist entered wearing a white shirt and striped pants. His tall, lean frame settled at a table where he signed books, as his grandchildren played about the room. Several exotic breeds of dogs mingled with the crowd that evening.

Other artists’ books on display included those of Rudy Burckhardt and Louise Bourgeois. The gallery also exhibited artworks in addition to books. One was called “U.N. Top Burner,” a stainless steel hot plate with the United Nations emblem embossed atop.

Seen were caterer and event planner Mark Fahrer and his artist wife Marguerita, who was born in Australia and raised in Brazil, and sculptor Erin Mallay. Also seen was audiovisual consultant and designer Gregory Moss, whose former baby-sitters included members of the Beats and a young Bob Dylan: “We played bongo drums together.”

Down Houston Street others enjoyed themselves at Katz’s Delicatessen with just as much relish.

***

TURK’S TREK The Knickerbocker has learned that author Jon Turk’s next book will be about a 96-year-old woman in Kamchatka – a kind of shaman who once laughed at a bear and scared it away.

In his latest book, “In the Wake of the Jomon: Stone Age Mariners and a Voyage Across the Pacific” (International Marine/McGraw-Hill), Mr. Turk set out to see if humans 10,000 years ago could have traveled in open boats across the Pacific from Japan to North America. Mr. Turk successfully made the two-year trip in a kayak and 16-foot trimaran, despite a whirlpool at sea and days of getting hit in the chest with cold ocean waves. “Jon was always different from my other children,” said Amos Turk, the author’s father, attending his son’s recent reading at Half King in Chelsea.

***

HATS OFF TO HART Kitty Carlisle Hart will celebrate her 95th birthday by performing at Feinstein’s at the Regency from September 20-24. She will be celebrating the centennial of her late husband, playwright-director Moss Hart.