History Main / DetectivePatsy

This trope is often used as a reveal or twist, expect spoilers below.

** Notably used in ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooAndTheWitchsGhost'' where [[spoiler: Ben Ravencroft invites the gang to Oakhaven, while planning to summon the ghost of his evil ancestor]].

* Used in the two part ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'' episode "The Call." [[spoiler: Superman]] asks for Batman's help uncovering a traitor in the JLU. Guess who the traitor is?

** In "Not A Very Civil Civil Servant", [=CI5=] is given a watching brief on a corruption trial over the objections of its boss George Cowley. The corrupt bureaucrat who arranged this tries to end the brief after the accused are acquitted--but that's only because a witness 'committed suicide' and Cowley is no longer in a mood to drop the matter. Turns out giving such a task to a BadassBureaucrat with a [[EliteAgentsAboveTheLaw virtually unlimited brief of his own]] is a bad idea.

* Usually not applicable to police, but ''Series/{{Columbo}}'' caught one once, when the murderer was the commissioner. He specifically requested Columbo for the case, having somehow failed to notice that the "bumbling" detective had a nearly spotless track record, having only failed to close ''one'' case in his entire decades-long career.
** To be fair, Columbo claims that he only solves about half of his cases and may be speaking truthfully. We just so happen to see his triumphs, so it's at least understandable if that's the case.
** It also thematically fits with comissioner's fundamentally ironic character; a highly-placed police official who's neck-deep in vice and violence. It's ''also'' ironic that someone who's a former ''investigator'', and clearly very smart, doesn't realize how competent the guy he wanted is. It's also ironic if the murderer wanted the legendary Columbo ''because'' he thinks he can outsmart him.
** The commissioner uses his inside position to get info about the investigation, and to try and pin the crime on a patsy. But he's dealing with Columbo, so the operative word is "try".

* ''Series/{{Monk}}'': In "Mr. Monk and the Leper," Monk is hired by a man who introduces himself as Derek Bronson, who has been voluntarily missing on account of his severe, horrifically disfuguring leprosy for seven years, and while he refuses to show his face in polite society he wants Monk to break into his old house and steal some letters that would show he was cheating on his (saying they would “destroy her” if she ever found them). It turns out to be a hoax, the real Derek is dead (likely murdered by his wife) but he left his fortune to his sister and nephews, so said wife orchestrated the whole thing so that Monk (by this point in the series a celebrity who’s probably the most respected detective in America) would later testify against him being declared legally dead. To this end she hires (and later kills) an imposter to impersonate her husband, with the leprosy angle exploiting Monk’s intense germophobia to keep him from getting a good look at the man or becoming too invested in the case.

* ''Series/{{Monk}}'': In "Mr. Monk and the Leper," Monk is hired by a man who introduces himself as Derek Bronson, who has been missing for seven years and will soon be declared legally dead at a probate hearing. He has Monk and Natalie break into his house to retrieve some letters, and while they're doing so, they are caught by Mandy Bronson, Derek's wife. Monk then attends a probate hearing where he testifies and validates Mandy's story that Derek is alive. All is well....until Monk sees Julie trying to open a bottle of ketchup and she comments, "Who would need ketchup in 1840?" causing Monk to realize that he's been duped, because the security panel in Derek's house had the words "Founded 2003" on it (the episode was aired in 2006), so he wonders how Derek could know his own house security code for a system installed after he had vanished. He concludes that seven years ago, Mandy murdered her husband, then got rid of the body and lived off his money, aware that when he was officially declared dead, she'd lose his house, so she hired an acquaintance - a professional pianist - and seduced him to impersonate Derek, and they brought Monk in as a "witness" because they knew that if he thought Derek was a leper, he'd never want to take a good look at the man (further helped by making the meetings happen in dimly lit locations). Monk and Natalie then discover that Mandy has shot and killed the accomplice and is planning to get rid of his body in the same way she got rid of her husband's.

* ''Series/ColdCase'' had an interesting variation: A professor was accused, but never proven guilty, of the murder of one of his female students. Because of this he was discredited and fired by the university. He went to the team to have them reopen the case, only for them to figure out ''was'' him all along, and this time they gathered enough evidence to arrest and convict him. Oops.

* ''ComicBook/BatmanBlackAndWhite'': In "Fortunes", a private detective is hired to find a missing woman and discovers that there's been murder done. His client is the murderer, who hired him apparently on the basis that having an independent third party discover the body would make it less likely for suspicion to fall on her than if she'd "discovered" the murder herself; unfortunately for her, it doesn't take him long to see through the false clues planted at the crime scene and identify the real culprit.

** In the novella ''The Scroll of the Dead'' by David Stuart Davies, [[spoiler: an eminent Egyptologist is secretly working with two murderous aristocratic occultists who believe that the eponymous scroll will give them immortality ... if they can find it. After failing to decipher the scroll that reveals its location, they arrange a FakedKidnapping, and send the Egyptologist's daughter to seek Holmes's help in "finding" her father, leading him to find a copy of the location scroll in their abandoned hideout, as they believe -- correctly -- that his skill in codebreaking will succeed where knowledge of Ancient Egypt has failed.]]

->'''Adrian Monk:''' ''[distracted by Natalie drinking a bottle of mouthwash]'' Will you please? And that’s why they chose me. Adrian Monk, the perfect patsy! They knew about my problems. They knew I’d never take a good look at the guy. So, there never really was a leper except for the guy you were making out with all night.
-->-- ''Series/{{Monk}}'', "Mr. Monk and the Leper"

* {{Inverted|Trope}} in the ''WesternAnimation/FostersHomeForImaginaryFriends'' episode "Jackie Khones and the Case of the Overdue Library Book", when Mac hires Jackie Khones to find out who stole his library card to check out a book that has since become overdue. The culprit? [[spoiler:Jackie.]]

* ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'' featured this something like every second episode, and so did the movie (notably ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooAndTheWitchsGhost'').

* Happens to Jake Gittes at the start of ''Film/{{Chinatown}}''.

* The 1987 thriller ''Film/NoWayOut'' subverts this: Commander Tom Farrell, the man that Defense Secretary David Brice and his aide Scott Pritchard hire to investigate a murder that they are [[WitchHunt attempting to blame]] on a [[RedHerringMole Soviet mole]] ''is'' the [[HiredToHuntYourself person they are trying to frame]] and knows that Brice is the one actually guilty of the murder.

** In the novella ''The Scroll of the Dead'' by David Stuart Davies, an eminent Egyptologist is secretly working with two murderous aristocratic occultists who believe that the eponymous scroll will give them immortality ... if they can find it. After failing to decipher the scroll that reveals its location, they arrange a FakedKidnapping, and send the Egyptologist's daughter to seek Holmes's help in "finding" her father, leading him to find a copy of the location scroll in their abandoned hideout, as they believe -- correctly -- that his skill in codebreaking will succeed where knowledge of Ancient Egypt has failed.

** In the novella ''The Scroll of the Dead'' by David Stuart Davies, an eminent Egyptologist is secretly working with two murderous aristocratic occultists who believe that the eponymous scroll will give them immortality ... if they can find it. After failing to decipher the scroll that reveals its location, they arrange a FakedKidnapping, and send the Egyptologist's daughter to seek Holmes's help in "finding" her father, believing -- correctly -- that his skill in codebreaking will succeed where knowledge of Ancient Egypt has failed.

* The UrExample is probably the Literature/SherlockHolmes story ''The Adventure of the Retired Colourman''. A quote from the end of the story:
--> "You certainly seem to have met every difficulty," said the inspector. "Of course, he was bound to call us in, but why he should have gone to you I can't understand."\\

* Occurs in ''[[VideoGame/NancyDrew Nancy Drew: The Deadly Device]]''; believing Nancy Drew to be less-than-competent, the murderer hires her to investigate the death of a scientist.