I am, let me begin by acknowledging it, a lit-geek. An English major, and holder of a Poetic License (in the form of an MFA in writing), I'm one of those people who thinks Alexander Pope was a hoot; I can go on for hours about the difference between Modernism and Post-Modernism; I reread Jane Austen on bleak winter days; and I have a soft spot in my heart for an esoteric allusion or a well-turned pun. All of which would seem to make me the ideal reader of The Eyre Affair--I'm predisposed to like it from the title alone.

And there is much to like about this genre-piece-gone-wild, a detective novel set in England in an alternate version of 1985. In this universe, literary crime is a serious matter, what with forgeries, and thefts of original manuscripts, and terrorist factions determined to convince the world that Francis Bacon, or Christopher Marlowe, was the true author of the plays usually attributed to Shakespeare. So there’s an entire division of the Special Operations Network to deal with these ruffians: the Literary Detectives, or LiteraTecs, of whom our heroine, Thursday Next, is one. Thursday is a rising star among the LiteraTecs, a brilliant rogue agent, equal parts Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade, and Tom Clancy’s CIA operative Jack Ryan. She doesn’t shrink from using force, she’s all but fearless, and don’t even get her started on the Shakespeare question.

When the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit disappears from its display case, Thursday is enlisted to help track down a master criminal, Acheron Hades, who has mysterious powers and will stop at nothing to bring the literary establishment to its knees. Thursday’s uncle, Mycroft, has invented a device that allows people to pass into, and out of, books. And Hades has figured out that if this device is used on an original manuscript, all copies of the book are affected. His plan: to kidnap major literary characters and hold them for ransom. In a country in which everyone can recite Richard III from memory, this is no small threat. By the time Hades steals Jane from the manuscript of Jane Eyre, everybody’s involved, from the highest branches of the government, to the shadiest offices of the Goliath Corporation (which owns, makes, and oversees pretty much everything, from paper to weaponry), to the fervent fans and laypeople who make up the Brontë Federation.