History Literature / GarrettPI

* AuthorTract: Cook's views on organized religion are made very clear throughout the series, much as they are in ''Literature/TheBlackCompany.'' In most of the books, Garrett has a live-and-let-live attitude toward the various churches. He's not religious himself, but he respects the beliefs of people who are (his friend Playmate, for instance), and he doesn't consider them any more corrupt than the other powerful entities of Tun Faire. In ''Petty Pewter Gods'', however, the anvil comes out a bit. Garrett's ''real'' problem with religion is that all to often the people at the top are using it solely to exploit the people at the bottom. The exact same problem he has with the royalty and the Sorcerers on The Hill.

* DeathOfTheOldGods: The Godoroth and Shayir are the oldest human pantheons in the region, and must compete for the right not to be evicted from the Dream Quarter.

* CartwrightCurse: Belinda Contague's drivers have a habit of falling for her, then getting killed protecting her from assassins. Comes with the territory when you work for the queenpin...

* CreepyCrossdresser: Belinda Contague has been known to dress up as a dapper young man when she needs to be anonymous.

* EeriePaleSkinnedBrunette: Belinda Contague, who plays up this trope with makeup to appear more intimidating.

* GambitPileup: ''Faded Steel Heat'' has competing interests and scheming by the Call, the Outfit, the secret police, Black Dragon Valsung, the Brotherhood of Wolves, Reliance, a Hill sorcerer, [[spoiler: Tama Montezuma and Glory Mooncalled]]. Not to mention Garrett's agenda to protect the Weiders, the Dead Man's plan to meet one of the above schemers, Singe's emerging desire for independence, and a half-dozen others hoping to score some profit and/or free beer.

* GravityScrew: Morley makes a crack at the Dead Man's expense in ''Faded Steel Heat'', and the Loghyr sticks him to the ceiling as a chastisement. Being Morley, he takes it in stride.

* TheMole:
** [[spoiler: Genord]] in ''Faded Steel Heat''.
** Garrett sets out to infiltrate the humans-first racists in ''Faded Steel Heat''. [[spoiler: They never trust him enough to tell him anything intentionally, but he does manage to expose some shapeshifters among them and thus undermine their conspiracies by making them too paranoid to trust ''each other''.]]

* NobleBigot: Lt. Nagit from ''Faded Steel Heat''. Marengo North English ''tries'' to be this, but falls short on the "Noble" part in the clinch.

* ProperlyParanoid: In ''Faded Steel Heat'', [[spoiler: the revelation that their own ranks were infiltrated by shapeshifters breaks up the racialists' conspiracies, as they no longer trust even one another.]]

* TheQueenpin: Belinda Contague becomes this by “Faded Steel Heat”.

* TheyCallMeMisterTibbs: Lt. Nagit's introduction in ''Faded Steel Heat''. It's "Lieutenant" or "Mr. Nagit" to you, Garrett, not "Ed".

* UrineTrouble: The Goddamn Parrot starts to poop on the Dead Man in ''Faded Steel Heat'', and gets flung telekinetically across the room for his trouble.

* YouRemindMeOfX: In ''Faded Steel Heat'', Garrett is given the late Tad Weider's old clothes by Max. People who knew Tad find Garrett's resemblance to the fallen Weider son a bit unnerving, when seeing him dressed that way.

* ''Faded Steel Heat'' (1999).

* CleverCrows: Unlike most mortal creatures, crows can see the Shayir owl girls in ''Petty Pewter Gods''. Garrett speculates that this has to do with how ravens and crows are often associated with the gods in plenty of older religions.

* DivineDate: in ''Petty Pewter Gods''.
* DivineParentage: Cat, daughter of Imara. Thanks to her pantheon's DoubleStandard, Imara keeps Cat's existence a secret from Imar.

* GodsNeedPrayerBadly: A major part of ''Petty Pewter Gods'' involves the squabble between two minor pantheons struggling to keep a vacant temple in the local religious section of town. Whoever gets kicked off the block will most likely fade away into nonexistence from lack of belief.

* InvisibleToNormals: The various feuding Godoroth and Shayir from ''Petty Pewter Gods'' can't be perceived by mortals other than Garrett, for whom they're making an effort, and a few people like No-Neck who can vaguely sense there's ''something'' there.

* LivingMacGuffin: Garrett accidentally ''becomes'' one of these in ''Petty Pewter Gods'' due to some PowersThatBe meddling. They [[spoiler: Intended for him to pick which of the warring pantheons should continue to exist, possibly gathering a large amount of money by the way of bribes along the way]]. It didn't [[EldritchAbomination work out that way]].

* PowersThatBe: Annoy the heck out of Garrett in ''Petty Pewter Gods''.

* RoofHopping: Garrett and Cat do quite a bit of this when they're eluding the attentions of the ''Petty Pewter Gods''.

* ShapeshifterBaggage: The deities in ''Petty Pewter Gods'' can change size without difficulty, but the flying horses' torsos narrow drastically when their wings emerge, implying these animals retain the same mass with or without wings.

* {{Unicorn}}: Black Mona, the Shayir hunter-goddess, rides one in ''Petty Pewter Gods''.

* TheWorldsExpertOnGettingKilled: No-Neck from ''Petty Pewter Gods'' brings Garrett up to speed on how the Dream Quarter works, only to get interrogated to death for his trouble.

* YouAreNumberSix: Cat's cherub buddy is called Fourteen, because the mythos he comes from never bothered to give its cherubim individual names.

* ''Petty Pewter Gods'' (1995).

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/garretpi.png]]

* AnythingThatMoves: Morley. Garrett too, to an extent.

* TrappedByGamblingDebts: Morley has a problem with this early in the series until he manages to get his gambling addiction under control.

* TheMatchmaker: Dean spends several books trying to get Garrett interested in his homely nieces, without success. Barring that, he's not averse to pressuring Garrett to get married to Tinnie, Maya, Belinda, or indeed pretty much ''anybody'' who's not Winger.

* OneNoteCook: Dean's cooking in ''Cruel Zinc Melodies'' gets into a rut: he's been serving various forms of stew (fish, rabbit, beef, chicken) for enough days in a row that Garrett calls him out on it.

* ServileSnarker: Dean. His reaction to Garrett's various supernaturally inclined, city/world saving endeavors? Nagging him about his [[TheAlcoholic love of the sauce]], his [[AnythingThatMoves taste in women]], and how he needs to get a steady job.

* ThatOldTimePrescription: Dean brews willow-bark tea for Garrett after nights of heavy drinking.

* TrademarkFavoriteFood: Singe and steamed apples. For Dean, it's tea.

* CoDragons: Crask and Sadler are this for Chodo for several of the early novels. Subverted as of ''Dread Brass Shadows'', when they become Co-Dragons With An Agenda, after which they're on the run from Contague payback.

** Subverted by Crask and Saddler. Turns out they're just life partners.

** Garrett himself is briefly floored to hear Sadler address Crask by his first name: he'd always assumed even Crask's mommy called him "Crask".

** The "little booger" from ''Deadly Quicksilver Lies'' isn't all that big, but [[spoiler: it does enough damage for a whole swarm of BigCreepyCrawlies]].

* CreepyCrossdresser:
** ''Deadly Quicksilver Lies''. [[spoiler: Also Recursive.]]
** Belinda Contague has been known to dress up as a dapper young man when she needs to be anonymous.

* DraftDodging:
** '''Inverted''' by Deal Relway who did not have to serve time in the Cantard because he was not a pure human, but chose to do so as he personally felt it was his duty.
** A royal bureaucrat in ''Deadly Quicksilver Lies'' turns up looking for the Rainmaker, who's not on record as having served his five years in the Cantard. [[spoiler: For a good reason: Grange "the Rainmaker" Cleaver was the alternate identity of Maggie Jenn, and women aren't subject to Karentine military conscription unless they're sorcerers.]]

* FragileSpeedster: The "little booger" from ''Deadly Quicksilver Lies''.

* ItsQuietTooQuiet: Garrett Lampshades it to Eleanor in the aftermath of ''Deadly Quicksilver Lies''.

* TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday: The witch Handsome from ''Deadly Quicksilver Lies'' runs one.

** In a nickname example, both the witch Garrett consults in ''Deadly Quicksilver Lies'' and the security guard at the World building site from ''Cruel Zinc Melodies'' go by "Handsome".

* PlanetOfSteves: The main reason Garrett didn't like ''No Ravens Went Hungry'', the historical trilogy of books from ''Deadly Quicksilver Lies'', was that far too many of its characters had virtually-identical names.

* SchmuckBait: The small box Handsome lends to Garrett in ''Deadly Quicksilver Lies''. [[spoiler: Even ''after'' it starts to buzz menacingly and one of his thugs warns him, Davenport still opens it and unleashes the deadly "little booger" on himself.]]

* ShaggyDogStory: The treasure of Eagle, sought by many competing parties in ''Deadly Quicksilver Lies'', [[spoiler: fell into the sea and was lost centuries ago. And the Dead Man knew it all along, but nobody asked.]]

* ''Deadly Quicksilver Lies'' (1994).

* DungeonPunk: A combination of PrivateEye FilmNoir fiction with HighFantasy yet not set in an UrbanFantasy world. The series stradles this and FantasticNoir. Tun Faire is a city full of corruption, crime syndicates, corrupt city watch, and noble families carrying dark secrets. Garrett has a distaste for all manner of authority and spends much of his time thumbing his nose at it, no matter whether its gods or kings.

* DraftDodging: '''Inverted''' by Deal Relway who did not have to serve time in the Cantard because he was not a pure human, but chose to do so as he personally felt it was his duty.

* DungeonPunk: A combination of PrivateEye FilmNoir fiction with HighFantasy yet not set in an UrbanFantasy world.

* OurElvesAreDifferent
* OurGhostsAreDifferent
* OurGnomesAreWeirder: Subverted? Gnomes are just short people. A whole race of them. The Tates are a reoccurring family of them.
** Not quite. It's stated that they have some elf or dwarf blood, but not so much that they can't pass for ordinary humans even among die-hard racists. Garrett does refer to Mr. Tate as "the gnome king" at one point, but that's just him being a DeadpanSnarker; ''real'' gnomes, when shown, could barely reach his kneecaps.

* NakedPeopleTrappedOutside: When Rose Tate pays Saucerhead to beat Garrett up, Garrett hires Tharpe to deliver payback by giving Rose a spanking, stripping her naked, and letting her walk home without realizing Saucerhead is ensuring her safety. The threat of being left nude in a Full Harbor alley helps convince a mook to rat out his boss, as public nudity in the military-controlled town could get the culprit condemned to the silver mines. The first of the mystery redheads in ''Dread Brass Shadows'' stumbles into Garrett's house stark naked and immediately passes out.