Jack Spratt (fictional detective) Jack Spratt (fictional detective) Jack Spratt is the protagonist in a series of alternate history science fiction fantasy novels by Jasper Fforde. He was named after the character from the English nursery rhyme. As revealed in "The Big Over Easy", for example, he hates eating fat, and was once married to a woman who ate nothing else (hence, she died). Spratt is an obvious satire on the general detective stereotype. Whereas famous detectives such as Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and Sherlock Holmes have been portrayed as confident, successful, substance-abusing loners, Spratt does not have a substance abuse problem, and is
Alan Mycroft Alan Mycroft Alan Mycroft is a professor at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge, where he is also director of studies for computer science. Mycroft read Mathematics at Cambridge then moved to Edinburgh where he completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree with a thesis on the Abstract interpretation and optimising transformations for applicative programs supervised by Rod Burstall and Robin Milner. Mycroft's research interests are in Programming Languages, Software Engineering and Algorithms. With Arthur Norman, he co-created the Norcroft C compiler. He is also a named trustee of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a