Eddie Bear Books in Order

The Eddie Bear books are noir detective stories smuggled inside what looks, at first glance, like a children’s setting. The action takes place in Toy City, formerly Toy Town, where nursery‑rhyme characters are pampered celebrities and every toy comes to life once the humans aren’t looking.

In The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, teenage runaway Jack arrives in Toy City dreaming of adventure and instead finds a grimy, vice‑ridden sprawl. Rich 'Preadolescent Poetic Personalities' – Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet, Jack Horner and the rest – are being murdered in spectacularly themed ways. Eddie Bear, a battered teddy with a taste for drink and trouble, recruits Jack as his partner to catch the killer.

The sequel, The Toyminator, catches up with the pair after the events of the first book. Eddie has lost his post as mayor of Toy City, Jack has drifted into a dead‑end job in a diner and Jill has walked out. When a duplicate Eddie appears amid strange lights and toys start vanishing, the old team is dragged into a case that leads far beyond their plastic streets.

Despite the cartoon trappings, these stories lean hard into adult humour: boozy stakeouts, brothels, movie pastiches and plenty of blood among the fluff. Rankin has fun twisting nursery‑rhyme logic, poking at modern celebrity culture and asking what happens to a world built for children when its inhabitants grow up.

If you like the idea of a hard‑boiled teddy bear trying to keep order in a city of wind‑up cars and murderous rhymes, Eddie Bear is the guide you want.