The characters from the fairy tales had to leave their land and now live among the humans. Snow White is the second in command of Fabletown (the Fairy city within New York City).
Rose Red (Snow White's sister) is missing and possibly dead. The Big Bad Wolf (or Bigby Wolf as he is now known) is the detective in charge of the investigation. Jack and Bluebeard are the prime suspects.

It's a nice read, with a couple of side notes and little winks to the original Fables and Fairy Tales and a big fat wink to mystery novels and the classic parlour scene where the detective gets to tell how he solved the mystery (this scene reminded me so much of Agatha Christie and her classic parlour scenes for Hercule Poirot).

Hoping I can get my hands on the next issues... ( )

The basic mystery set-up was maybe not the most compelling start to the series, but I am intrigued enough with the characters and the world to want to continue reading to see where this story goes. ( )

Decent graphic novel but it falls a little short of introducing what seems like a potentially very interesting concept. Instead of using the concept to it's full advantage the plot reads like a fairly standard crime noire story. ( )

expired from the library. hard to read. my first graphic novel

The most uneven of the series, to be expected in a first book where characters are still being explored. A good introduction to the tone and general premise of Fables, but not really representative of the later arcing storyline of Fabletown and the Adversary.

#1 is a little too banal and self-impressed with its premise (you almost want to shout "get over it already" to a few characters who have supposedly been living for several human lifetimes in the real world). As with many graphic novel series, it won't hit its stride for another book or so.

While it could be considered "skippable," #1 does set the stage and it's satisfying to look back later in the series at how much some of the characters have changed and grown. ( )