History Literature / NurseryCrime

* SlapSlapKiss: Theatre/PunchAndJudy move in next to Jack in ''The Fourth Bear''. They're well known, in-universe, for domestically abusing each other, and arguing very, very loudly. Yet they do seem to actually love each other--[[TheImmodestOrgasm very, very loudly]]. They're also fairly successful marriage counselors. They beat each other into the hospital, but as they point out, this is their mutually aceptable way of working out issues (and foreplay), and after hundreds of years of marriage, they are still in love with one another.

* TheAllegedCar: Jack's cars. He chooses bland, poorly designed 70's British cars to differentiate himself from Chymes. His cars have a tendency to end up wrecked by the end of the book.

* WorldWarI: The theme park Sommeworld in ''The Fourth Bear''. Construction should be finished by Christmas. No, really.

** ''The Fourth Bear'' also features [[OscarWilde Dorian Gray]] as a used car dealer peddling appropriately macabre merchandise, and Caliban from [[Creator/WilliamShakespeare Shakespeare's]] ''The Tempest'' as a pest in the Spratt household.

* SlapSlapKiss: PunchAndJudy move in next to Jack in ''The Fourth Bear''. They're well known, in-universe, for domestically abusing each other, and arguing very, very loudly. Yet they do seem to actually love each other--[[TheImmodestOrgasm very, very loudly]]. They're also fairly successful marriage counselors.
** They beat each other into the hospital, but as they point out, this is their mutually aceptable way of working out issues (and foreplay), and after hundreds of years of marriage, they are still in love with one another.

* XanatosGambitPileup: [[spoiler: Pretty much everyone was trying to kill Humpty Dumpty, either as part of a larger plan, or just out of revenge.]]

* GenreBlindness: The nursery characters often don't realize that they are PDR (Persons of Dubious Reality). It's heavily implied that several members of the Nursery Crime Division are nursery characters themselves and are unaware of it, although [[JackAndTheBeanstalk Jack]] [[GenreSavvy does show some flashes of insight.]]

* GenreBlindness: The nursery characters themselves often don't realize that they are PDR (Persons of Dubious Reality). It's heavily implied that several members of the Nursery Crime Division are nursery characters themselves and are unaware of it, although [[JackAndTheBeanstalk Jack]] [[GenreSavvy does show some flashes of insight.]]

** Specifically: [[spoiler:"Pipper Piper picked Peck over Pickle or Pepper? Which of the Peck pair did Pipper Piper pick?" "Peter 'Pockmarked' Peck of Palmer Park! He was the Peck that Pipper Piper picked!" "No, no! You've got it all wrong! Paul Peck is the Palmer Park Peck. Peter Peck is the pockmarked Peck from Pembroke Park. Pillocks! I'd placed a pound on Pippa Piper picking P.C. Percy Proctor from Pocklington."]] [pause] "It seems a very laborious setup for a very lame joke, doesn't it?" "Yes", said Mary, shaking her head sadly, "I really don't know how [[JasperFforde he]] gets away with it".

* MayflyDecemberRomance: Jack's daughter falls in love with (and later marries) Prometheus. Yes, ''[[GreekMythology that]]'' Prometheus.

* ActorAllusion

* ExecutiveMeddling: The first book itself was originally going to be called ''Nursery Crime'' (as noted in ''The Well of Lost Plots'' at the end) but was changed due to marketing concerns.

''Nursery Crime'' is a series of humorous [[UrbanFantasy fantasy]] / [[{{Mystery}} detective]] novels written by meta-fiction maverick Creator/JasperFforde. They are a loose spin-off of the same author's ''Literature/ThursdayNext'' series: the world it's set in existed within an unpublishable PoliceProcedural novel that Thursday occupied in ''The Well of Lost Plots'', wherein the characters worried they would be deleted. It was turned into a refuge for characters from OralTradition lacking a proper ink-and-paper home to call their own, and thus ''Nursery Crime'' was born.

Think of it as ''{{Shrek}}'' [[XMeetsY meets]] ''LawAndOrder'', without the Court bits.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Anthropomorphic bears have a... ''problem'' with [[Literature/{{Goldilocks}} porridge]] ("flake"). They get addicted to it rather quickly, and it is a controlled substance when they are involved in a transaction. They also have problems with [[WinnieThePooh honey]] ("buzz" or "sweet") and [[Literature/PaddingtonBear marmalade]] ("chunk", "shred" or "peel"). Jack says he personally sees no problem with it, and his arguments in defense of it sound [[TheStoner fairly familiar]].