Have you ever wanted to have a jester? Contact the emergency company “Shutikha”, located on the street. Gorokhovaya, 13, pass strange tests, sign an amazing contract - and bring home not a clown, not a stand-up comedian, not a jokester, but a real buffoon? Strange, eccentric, unpredictable - and not at all funny to your friends and relatives? Nonsense, you say... Buffoonery... Absurdity... Wouldn’t you also want to see gladiatorial fights between lawyers, meet a genie from the fire department, be present during a raid by archers on a printing house, and meet the skinny old woman Quarenzima at the entrance? As always, the sudden, as usual, paradoxical novel by H. L. Oldie “The Cracker” is a grotesque, a farce, an amusingly painted screen, from behind which attentive Third Persons peek out, leading this narrative.