In "The Eyre Affair," first-time novelist Jasper Fforde gives new meaning to the term "literary thriller." Though set in Great Britain in 1985, the world of Fforde's imagining is one that Margaret Thatcher would hardly recognize.

A virtual police state, this England exists in a universe where time travel is routine so routine, in fact, that a special ChronoGuard is necessary to prevent radical revisionists from mucking up history and reality is disconcertingly mutable.

In this world, the Crimean War is entering its 131st year, Wales is an independent communist state, and all of Europe is under the thumb of a giant shadowy multinational called the Goliath Corporation.

Grim as its premise might seem, "The Eyre Affair" is, in fact, a delightfully cock-eyed concoction, reminiscent of Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," or Connie Willis' "To Say Nothing of the Dog."

Fforde tips his hand early, when he introduces us to his heroine, Thursday Next. The name alone should be enough to disabuse readers of any notion that this novel takes itself seriously, but Thursday's job is the real kicker: She's an operative for "SO-27, the Literary Detective Division of the Special Operations Network based in London," and it soon becomes clear that in her world, the arts are taken very seriously indeed.

"... (N)o one was taking any chances since a deranged individual had broken into Chawton, threatening to destroy all of Jane Austen's letters unless his frankly dull and uneven Austen biography was published. On that occasion no damage had been done, but it was a grim portent of things to come. In Dublin the following year an organized gang attempted to hold Jonathan Swift's papers to ransom. A protracted siege developed that ended with two of the extortionists shot dead and the destruction of several original political pamphlets and an early draft of 'Gulliver's Travels.' The inevitable had to happen. Literary relics were placed under bulletproof glass and guarded by electronic surveillance and armed officers."

Yet despite these occasional "small islands of excitement among the ocean of day-to-day mundanities that is SO-27," Thursday finds her life as a Literatec desperately dull until the original manuscript of Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit" is stolen under mysterious circumstances and, even more ominous, a minor character is literally extracted from the novel and murdered, thus changing the text irrevocably.

Thursday soon discovers this heinous act is the work of none other than Acheron Hades, the world's third-most-wanted criminal and that the "Martin Chuzzlewit" outrage is just the beginning of his nefarious plan to hold literary characters for ransom.

From here, Fforde effortlessly weaves together numerous subplots concerning the Goliath Corporation's involvement in the Crimean War, Thursday's romantic woes, the creation of a Prose Portal, and the denouement of "Jane Eyre."

Best of all, he studs his surreal narrative with a treasure trove of deadpan details: earnest pamphleteers who go door-to-door arguing that Francis Bacon really authored the plays of Shakespeare; a long-running production of "Richard III" that demands audience participation la "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"; a riot in which "a young surrealist had been killed stabbed to death by a gang adhering to a radical school of French impressionists"; and best of all, a glimpse into the private lives of literary characters when they're off the page.

The imagination at work here is unique, so one wishes the prose were consistently up to the same standard. And indeed, when engaged in his various flights of fancy, Fforde's writing is as playfully original and quirky as his ideas.

His prose loses some of its luster, however, whenever the story returns to plot points concerning Thursday's past in the Crimea or her personal life. But this is a minor quibble, given the many superior pleasures "The Eyre Affair" affords.

Even those who don't usually read fantasy will find it hard to resist a world in which the kidnapping of Jane Eyre precipitates a national crisis.