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Garrett, P.I. is a long-running fantasy noir series by Glen Cook. A Low Fantasy story set in a High Fantasy world, more specifically a fantasy counterpart of St. Louis populated by pretty much every fantasy creature ever conceived, the series follows the eponymous private investigator through his Chandleresque adventures.

It also has elements of Nero Wolfe — after providing all the leg work and investigating, Garrett will sometimes call upon his immobile, dead-yet-dreaming partner, a Loghyr. The telepathic Dead Man, as Garrett calls him, will often deduce a possible solution to the mystery.

The character is named after author Randall Garrett, whose Lord Darcy series was one of the first to place a detective in a fantasy setting. The series has also been compared to (and may have partially inspired) The Dresden Files as its opposite. Instead of a wizard using magic to investigate and solve crimes in our own world, Garrett is instead a fairly "traditional" detective in a fantasy world who uses real-world (and fairly mundane) techniques to unravel his mysteries.

Garret has also appeared in "The Shadow Thieves", a short story published in 2011's urban fantasy collection Down These Strange Streets, and "an investigator from TunFaire" was mentioned in The Dreamland Chronicles by Wm Mark Simmons.

Garrett P.I. has examples of:

  • Accidental Proposal: When Garrett and Tinnie encounter a powerful sorceress, he's worried the woman's flirty mannerisms will provoke Tinnie into a faux pas that will get them both blasted. He introduces Tinnie as his fiance purely to defuse the situation, only to have her hold him to it and demand a ring a few pages later.
  • Accidental Truth: Post-Dread Brass Shadows, Relway asks Garrett why Belinda has become the Contague mouthpiece instead of Chodo, and Garrett admits that Chodo had a stroke. He doesn't admit that Chodo is comatose, implying that Belinda's dad is still fully alert and becoming even meaner. Whispering Nickel Idols later reveals that Chodo is conscious, but has been drugged into immobility by his daughter, causing him to go insane with rage at his own helplessness.
  • Aerith and Bob: Names like Willard Tate, Max Weider, and Fred Blaine (the real name of a powerful sorcerer) side by side with Strafa Algardo (the real name of a powerful sorceress), Chodo Contague, Bic Gonlit, and many others.
  • Alien Abduction: This is how the Goddamn Parrot was Put on a Bus, to Garrett's immense relief. Much to Garrett's horror The Bus Came Back. But only for a cameo, thank Hano!
  • Alien Noninterference Clause: Casey comes searching for Kip's friends because they're violating this trope.
  • Alliterative Family: Max Weider named his sons Tad, Tom, and Ty. Averted with his daughters, Alex and Kittyjo.
  • Alliterative Name: Tinnie Tate, Zeck Zack, the Kronks (Kayean, Klaus, Kayeth), Bittegurn Brittigarn, Grubb Gruber. Lampshaded with Quincey Quentin Q. Quintillas's street-name of "Quince Quefour".
  • Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: The Faction think of their sorcerer parents this way, unlike the rest of the characters who are flat-out terrified of them.
  • And I Must Scream: The living nightmare which the Dead Man finds in stroke-impaired Chodo Contague's head.
  • Angrish: Bound to happen when someone gets frustrated and/or bopped on the head as often as Garrett.
  • Animal Eye Spy: Mr. Big is this for the Dead Man. John Stretch uses regular rats as Animal Nose Spies.
  • Animate Inanimate Object: Eleanor's painting, though Garrett's the only one who can see it.
  • Anti-Climax: What do Garrett and Co do when faced with an insane, incredibly powerful Loghyr? Slowly introduce thousands of hungry rats and insects into its private island to gobble it up. What does Garrett do when he comes into possession of a key that can open the otherworldly gateway and let out a God of Evil? Chop it up and sell it for scrap.
    • Given that one of Garrett's main motivations is maintaining his own comfortable little status quo these incredibly lazy solutions are very much in-character.
    • The resolution of the first dilemma listed is also Fridge Brilliance, as it's the one means of eliminating a dead Loghyr which his enemies are unlikely to be able to direct against the Dead Man, who has Garrett on hand to protect him from bugs.
  • Arranged Marriage: Nicks and Ty Weider. Morley Dotes and Indalir. In both cases, the would-be couples have absolutely no interest in going through with weddings planned before they were out of diapers.
  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Garrett has real trouble focusing on the task at hand in Wicked Bronze Ambition. Excusable because his bride-to-be was just killed and he's biting back grief to try and solve her murder.
  • Author Tract: Cook's views on organized religion are made very clear throughout the series, much as they are in The Black Company. 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 too 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.
  • Ax-Crazy: Quite a few Big Bads fall into this once the jig is up.
  • Barrier-Busting Blow: How Garrett escapes from a locked stable that's on fire.
  • Battle Butler: Mashego, Shadowslinger's servant. She doesn't survive, but she takes four enemies with her and wounds so many of the rest that they're in no shape to offer any resistance when Garrett and his allies track them down.
  • Berserk Button: Slither's "powziffle pheez". An invoked example, as Garrett deduces that a sorcerer messed with Slither's head to make him that way during the war.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Playmate.
  • Bewitched Amphibians: Garrett mentions this possibility to discourage Morley from making a pass at Furious Tide of Light.
  • Big Brother Instinct: John Stretch has an unusually-high interest (for a ratman) in his younger half-sister Pular Singe's welfare. Which is why he goes to great lengths to "rescue" her from Garrett in Angry Lead Skies, assuming that she's being held against her will by a human.
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: Cruel Zinc Melodies. Garrett's less-than-fond memories of the islands often include references to these too, albeit probably exaggerated.
    • Tara Chayne from Wicked Bronze Ambition conjures a pitch-black supernatural centipede to do her bidding, and it can grow big enough to grapple two opponents at once.
  • The Big Guy: Saucerhead, Playmate, and quite a few others.
  • Bittersweet Ending: A few, but Old Tin Sorrows and Cruel Zinc Melodies in particular stand out.
  • Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Ratpeople retain their rat ancestors' reproductive physiology, producing large litters and mating indiscriminately when females come into season. Singe suppresses her mating urges by wearing a suppressor amulet and avoiding unrelated ratmen at that time.
  • Bizarre Alien Senses: The Visitors from Angry Lead Skies have senses very different from humans', or so the Dead Man claims after he links with their minds. Garrett has a hard time understanding memories the Loghyr passes on to him from ratpeople or John Stretch's rats, as his sense of smell is negligible compared to theirs. Throughout the series, much is made of the night vision of the ratpeople and elves.
  • Black Magic: There's not much that the Hill sorcerers won't tolerate where magic is concerned, but crafting thread men en masse or Uplifting animals is frowned upon these days. (Not because of ethics, mind you, but because they tend to rile up the masses and/or have Gone Horribly Wrong in the past.)
  • The Blacksmith: Trivias
  • Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Alyx Weider, Giorgi Nicholas and Tinnie Tate. Sometimes extended to four hair colors when blonde Alyx, brown-haired Nicks, and redhead Tinnie are joined by raven-haired Belinda Contague.
  • Bounty Hunter: Bic Gonlit from Angry Lead Skies. Winger in Dread Brass Shadows before expanding her portfolio. Standing bounties on unicorns in the Cantard and feral dogs in the countryside are mentioned.
  • Brick Joke: In Angry Lead Skies, musing about his own Knight in Sour Armor track-record, Garrett observes that he's not the kind of guy who gets to rescue the Princess Classic, or even meet one. At the novel's end, he notices two girls riding three-wheels in the park, and is informed that they're the King's daughters. They're both fairly ugly.
  • Brilliant, but Lazy: Both Garrett and the Dead Man, both nag each other about it.
  • Brown Note: One of the ways Garrett keeps the body-count down in fights is to activate minor one-shot magic items that cause disorientation, nausea, blindness or other temporary impairments.
    • The wards placed on their clubhouse by the Faction include one that makes intruders feel a sudden and intense need for a loo.
  • Bullying a Dragon: Any human bigot stupid enough to hurl insults or rocks at Doris or Marsha quickly learns why it's wiser not to harass someone eighteen feet tall.
  • Call-Back: Morley would have been the one smuggled into the ceremony in a coffin in Wicked Bronze Ambition, but he couldn't handle the confinement so soon after his brush with captivity and incapacity in Gilded Latten Bones, so Garrett took his place.
  • The Cat Came Back: The Goddamn Parrot, which refuses to escape, and which nobody wants to take off Garrett's hands. Until the Visitors abduct the bird.
  • Catchphrase: Nog is inescapable
  • Chest Burster: In Wicked Bronze Ambition, Moonblight insists that a slain demonic creature's carcass be boiled to prevent it from releasing larval spawn that would burrow into nearby victims and act out this trope.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Maya after Old Tin Sorrows. We're told later that she got tired of waiting around for Garrett to man up and settle down so she married someone else. Garrett didn't take it well.
  • Clarke's Third Law: In Wicked Bronze Ambition, the Operators don't realize that Kip and Kevans have no magical powers for their ritual to steal, assuming that anyone who can invent so many amazing things must be using magic, not engineering, to do it.
  • Clingy Jealous Girl: Tinnie. Notably she's the one who insisted on the noncommittal nature of her and Garrett's relationship. By Gilded Latten Bones she's become so possessive, obsessively driving Garrett's friends and her own responsibilities out of their life, that it torpedoes their relationship and nearly ruins her career.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: A number of times, Garrett finds what's left of people who've met with this trope, usually at the hands of the Outfit.
    • It's implied that this is why Uncle Willard brought tools along when the Tates capture the Serpent in Dread Brass Shadows.
    • The Rainmaker has a particular reputation for this.
  • Come Alone: At one point Garrett Lampshades how he might be walking into a Come Alone situation, and how there must have been a time when it actually succeeded in suckering someone into a trap for this trope to exist. This doesn't stop him from walking right into the situation that inspired these musings, and doing it alone, however.
  • Corrupt Church: How Morley and Garrett (and everyone else) sees the various sectors of the Church. (They're pretty much right.)
  • Conscription: Mandatory for all pure human males and any half bloods that want to be treated as full humans under the law. Brought to an end when Karenta wins the war.
  • Continuity Nod: Usually at least one per book and usually to the previous book in the series.
    • The vampire-nest from book one got a nod about half a dozen books later, as a hideout for Glory Mooncalled's guerrilla forces.
    • Garrett finds a man murdered with a kef sidhe strangling cord in Old Tin Sorrows, and Morley tells him something about this exotic weapon. Four books later, in Petty Pewter Gods, Garrett compares Magodor's magical rope to a kef sidhe strangling cord.
  • Convenient Coma: Chodo Contague.
  • Covers Always Lie: The covers of the novels almost always show Garrett in a suit with a long coat and either a Fedora or Trilby hat. He never dresses like this in the story itself (in fact descriptions of fashions are very rare indeed), and in particular seldom remembers to wear a hat, much to his annoyance when it rains.
    • Cook even wrote a possible Take That! at the covers as Garrett's lack of a hat is a plot point when he dons one in order to go about in disguise.
      • Well... this is a little screwy, the level of technology as far as weaponry and transportation is at the Medieval Stasis level, but in some of the (rare) descriptions we get of urban architecture, manufacturing, and some of the clothing comes right out of the Noir era. It's a unique series.
      • Depicting the Tates with pointy ears was also a mistake, as Garrett never suspected Denny Tate of having nonhuman blood until Willard told him about it, and Tinnie passed for human among die-hard racists in Faded Steel Heat.
    • The covers always get Garrett's hair color wrong, too.
    • Dread Brass Shadows's cover depicts a dwarf reading a newspaper near a modern-looking drainage grating. While there is minor printing technology in Karenta (otherwise Garrett's book collection would be far more valuable than his entire business), there's nothing on that scale, and sanitation is still at the "gardee loo!" stage.
    • Multiple covers depict Garret smoking. He doesn't.
  • Creepy Crows: The Shayir owl-girls quickly learn that real owls go to ground in daylight, because crows that spot one flying around will caw up a bunch of buddies to mob and drive off the "predator".
  • Crystal Dragon Jesus: Hano and Terrel = God and Jesus to the Church and the Orthodox. Plenty of other religions coexist with them, human and otherwise, but these are the dominant Karentine human faiths.
  • Cult: Several of them throughout the series, ranging from apocalyptic lunatics and misogynistic fanatics to benign healers and missionary door-knockers.
  • Cute Kitten: Whispering Nickel Idols.
  • Damsel in Distress: Often what gets the story rolling.
  • Dark Age of Supernames: Sorcerers adopt aliases. These are obviously intended (by the sorcerers) to sound cool and menacing. Often, they just sound pretentious, and this may be Lampshaded mercilessly. Examples include Raver Styx, Fox Direheart ("just old Fred Blaine at home"), Invisible Black, Furious Tide of Light, and Dreamstalker Doomscrye (or possibly Doomstalker Dreamscrye).
    • Lampshaded in Whispering Nickel Idols, when Morley quips that the one thing he knows about the person Garrett just asked about (Penny Dreadful) is that they'd better find another name to avoid getting smacked around for having it.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: The Cult of A-Laf, Queen of the Night, is a benign one victimized by A-Lat's fanatics.
  • Day-Old Legend: Garrett suspects this is true of Toetickler, a club he buys from a passing dwarf when he's chasing someone and needs a weapon. The dwarf claims it's a Legendary Weapon to jack up the price.
  • Deadly Game: The Tournament of Swords from Wicked Bronze Ambition. Deconstructed in that even Garrett immediately sees how ridiculous an idea it is, and every attempt has been scuttled because the contestants' families went after the Operators rather than risk their children's lives on a one-in-twelve chance.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Just about everyone, Garrett included.
  • Death by Childbirth: Jennifer Stantnor's mother died after giving birth to her because her husband tampered with the medicine her doctor gave her.
  • Death by Origin Story: Garrett's pretty certain that this trope applies to Deal Relway, although he doesn't know any details. Given the intensity of Relway's crime-busting fanaticism, he's probably right.
  • Demoted to Extra: Happens to Winger and Saucerhead in the later novels, as Garrett's interests gradually shift from street-level to the mercantile and upper-crust levels of society. The latter does get a parting moment of glory in Wicked Bronze Ambition, battling Jiffy almost to a standstill, but the former winds up little more than comic relief.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: Gnorst Gnorst, son of Gnorst, the Gnorst of Gnorst. Garrett figures the guy's name makes perfect sense to his fellow dwarves.
  • Didn't See That Coming: Nobody (except the Dead Man) predicted that Glory Mooncalled would turn against Karenta, and even Old Bones missed that he'd declare the Cantard an independent republic. And nobody at all predicted that the morCartha - barbaric little flying creatures previously considered pests - would swing the balance of the war so drastically that Karenta would wipe out both Venageta and Mooncalled's republic in a matter of months, ending generations of conflict altogether.
  • Dinosaurs Are Dragons: A villain from Wicked Bronze Ambition refers to the sentient flying thunder lizards as "dragons".
  • Draft Dodging: 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.
  • The Dreaded: Orchidia Hedley-Farfoul, aka the Black Orchid. Even Shadowslinger gets scared when she realizes the former Nighthunter (= Special Forces Hunter of Monsters and assassin) has been roused out of retirement.
    • The Dead Man himself can be this trope to those with secrets to hide.
  • Dumb Is Good: Singe comes to accept Furious Tide of Light when she concludes that the sorceress, who is book-smart but world-naive, is too simple to be evil.
  • Dungeon Punk: The novels are about a down-on-his-luck Hardboiled Detective in a city full of sorcerers, dwarfs, elves, and so on. Mr. Cook himself has said that Tun Faire isn't based on any particular city, but is influenced by his hometown of St. Louis. The combination of Private Eye Film Noir fiction with High Fantasy yet not set in an Urban Fantasy world. The series stradles this and Fantastic Noir. 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.
  • Eldritch Location: Bohdan Zhibak
  • Elemental Powers: Most sorcerer's stock in trade. Casters associated with air (Stormwardens, Windwalkers) and fire (Firelords) are most common in TunFaire; water (Icemasters) and earth (Ferromancers) orientations have been mentioned, but aren't usually found in the city.
  • Embarrassing First Name: Waldo Tharpe, aka Saucerhead.
  • ET Gave Us Wifi: Kip Prose's inventions appear with increasing frequency once the "silver elves" enhance his brain and Amalgamated puts them into production.
  • Evidence Scavenger Hunt: Deconstructed, as Garrett regularly informs the reader that it's a one-in-ten shot he'll find anything informative at all. He still has to go through the motions though, even if it means poking around a mound of ogre corpses or taking a dip in a freezing well.
  • Evil Cripple: Chodo Contague.
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: Brownie and her companions.
  • Evil Sorcerer: Fido Easterman desperately wants to be this trope, and his residence and behavior fulfill its motifs to the letter. Too bad for him that he was born with no magical gift whatsoever.
    • Drachir and the Candides were historical examples, as was Nooney Krombach.
    • Shadowslinger plays up this reputation, although Garrett himself is unsure how much of it's just an act.
  • Fairy Sexy: Melondie Kadare is this in youth.
  • False Rape Accusation: Played for Laughs when the Goddamn Parrot's trouble-making tirades sound like a child being assaulted, making Garrett fear he'll get lynched by his neighbors before they realize it's a bird talking.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Blood thirsty, carnivorous unicorns? Check. Thunder lizards? Check. Ghosts, zombies, elves, gnomes, dwarves, vampires, trolls and about a zillion other random mythic creatures, plus a few new ones (mostly due to the others constantly screwing each other)? Double check.
    • Fire-breathing dragons, gryphons, and ostriches are purely-allegorical, however.
  • Fantastic Noir: A detective story set in a High Fantasy setting with a private eye protagonist.
  • Fantastic Racism: All over the damn place, given that there are so many races mingling in Tun Faire to begin with. Both Garrett and Morley face anti-human and anti-mixed breed sentiment all the time. Morley himself seems to have a special hatred for tiny races (pixies, leprechauns), and a dislike for Ratpeople which Garrett shares until Singe comes into his life. Garrett does develop respect (if not actual fondness) for her brother, John Stretch, as well.
    • Becomes a major political concern after the war's end, when human soldiers return home to find non-humans occupying all the civilian jobs.
    • As hostile as some humans are to half-breeds, hybrids are apparently even more unpopular in many non-human communities. Hence, their gravitation to Karenta, where at least they're treated like (second-class) citizens rather than complete garbage.
    • Centaurs aren't liked or trusted even before their Cantard tribes turned against Karenta to support Mooncalled's republic; after that, they're despised nearly as much as ratpeople.
    • The Hanite religions practice this trope, preaching that only pure-blooded humans have souls and Other Races are just clever animals that learned to mimic humans' speech and culture.
    • As an artificial race with no diplomatic history and no territory of their own, ratpeople technically have no more legal rights under the Karentine legal system than do regular rats. Ironically, human racists don't take full advantage of this, evidently assuming the rat-folk are too lowly and craven to ever pose a threat.
      • Even among ratpeople, the brown-furred strain to which Singe and Reliance belong is dominant over, and looks down upon, the two other strains. When some "grays" cause trouble in Wicked Bronze Ambition, John Stretch's people teach them a harsh lesson about crossing the dominant strain.
  • Fat Slob: Puddle
  • Fictional Holiday: Karenta celebrates its own version of a Day of the Dead, on the one hand, but also something called "White Day" which combines Valentine's Day with a broader celebration of friendship.
  • Fiery Redhead: Tinnie Tate.
  • Flock of Wolves: Mind-probing the "silver elves" from Angry Lead Skies, the Dead Man discovers that a lot of them are engaged in political or commercial espionage against their own colleagues. Also, Garrett himself finds that none of the females are as content with their species' allegedly having "outgrown" sexuality as their prudish facade suggests.
  • Flying Firepower: Furious Tide of Light played this trope straight during the Cantard War, and can still zap villains from on high if necessary.
  • Flying Saucer: One of the "silver elves"'s vehicles.
  • Foul Mouthed Parrot: Mr. Big, aka The Goddamn Parrot. An invoked example, as Morley and his henchmen are implied to have spent months pre-loading the bird with filthy and fight-provoking phrases before gifting it to Garret as a prank.
  • Friend on the Force: Westman Block, although not a good friend of Garrett's, isn't averse to trading information or even slipping leads to Garrett which, politically, he can't pursue himself. Scithe is more like Tinnie's Friend On The Force, as he's got a heavy crush on her and can't help but tell her things she can then pass on to Garrett.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: Chodo Contague reputedly started out as a street-gang kid, but was recruited into the Outfit and rose to dominate it. The fathers of Raver Styx and Amiranda Crest rose from humble beginnings to become pretty terrifying even by Hill standards.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: Kip Prose. Tell him you need a better means of lighting a theater than candles or oil lanterns in the morning, and he'll have invented Victorian-era gaslight by later that afternoon.
  • Gasshole: Mr. Mulclar, the door repairman, is an otherwise-nice man who's largely oblivious to his severe flatulence.
  • Genius Bruiser: Playmate.
  • Genre-Busting: The whole series combines Film Noir with fantasy, and Angry Lead Skies tosses Grey-like aliens into the mix.
  • Giant Animal Worship: The snake-priest Garrett asks for information about the Shayir and Godoroth boasts of his own cult's possession of a genuine "god-snake" big enough to swallow horses. Garrett heartily approves of the "swallow horses" part.
  • Giant Equals Invincible: Averted with thunder-lizards, which are specifically stated to be very vulnerable to intelligent races' cunning, group tactics and sharp, poisoned steel.
  • Going Native: The Grinblatts, a family of dwarves from Cruel Zinc Melodies, dress like humans, and their children act more human than their parents.
  • Granola Girl: Guy, actually. Morley strongly believes that greens are nature's cure alls, and that fresh air and exercise stave off all kinds of horrible diseases, and is very vocal about his opinions. Garrett points out that it kind of clashes with the fact he kills people for a living.
    • It's also suggested that this kind of thinking is very much a Dark Elf thing.
  • Great Offscreen War: The War in the Kantard occupies a huge chunk of the setting's backstory but is taking place far from Tun Faire. The only time we encounter any of its effects are through veterans like Garrett or briefly when Garrett visits the front lines in the first book.
  • Groin Attack: Garrett tends to dish these out in close combat, and several plot-relevant characters have been on the receiving end over the series.
  • Handsome Lech: Morley. Also Garrett, shading into Chivalrous Pervert. A general who met him briefly during his wartime service recalled him as "the kid who could find a girl anywhere, even in the middle of an uninhabited swamp."
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Loads.
  • Hardboiled Detective: Garrett, obviously. Pokey Pigota also.
  • Haunted House: The Dead Man used to make people think this was true of the house on Macunado Street, until Garrett bought it and moved in, making the ruse unnecessary to keep intruders away.
  • Heinz Hybrid: Also loads, to the point where there's a slang term ("unique") for hybrids with complicated ancestry.
  • The Help Helping Themselves: In one novel, a side plot is that various minor knickknacks vanishing from the client's house. It eventually turns out that the butler was stealing and selling them because his employer hadn't revised the household budget to allow for inflation in years, and he needed the extra money to keep the estate going.
  • Heroic BSoD: A whole lot of witnesses, heroic or just bystanders, experience a brief BSOD at the sight of the Hill's most-dreaded elite sorcerers having had the living crap kicked out of them in Cruel Zinc Melodies.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: For someone so obsessed with law and order, a whole lot of people have managed to vanish under Deal Relway's watch. . .
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners: Garrett and Morley, bordering on Ho Yay sometimes.
  • Hidden Depths: Sarge seems like a run-of-the-mill bruno early on, but it's later revealed that he's both a talented drill sergeant able to get even Kip Prose to shut up and pay attention, and a former field medic who could stay drunk for the rest of his life admitting as much to grateful fellow-veterans in pubs if he wanted.
  • Holographic Disguise: Most of the Visitors rely on these to pass for Karentines. Naturally, Garrett and his friends peg them as illusions generated via custom sorcery.
  • Hopeless Suitor: Dollar Dan Justice, to Pular Singe.
  • Horsing Around: Garrett's running-gag feud with the equine species.
  • Hospital Hottie: Doc Chaz
  • Hot Librarian: Linda Lee
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Played straight with Saucerhead's various petite girlfriends; inverted with Winger and the Remora. Later averted by Saucerhead and Winger.
  • Humans Are Bastards: Garrett's opinion on the matter, though technically it's more like 'everyone is a bastard'.
  • Hypercompetent Sidekick: Singe is much better at keeping Garrett's business organized and profitable than he ever was, so much so that her ever-growing talents actually scare him a little. He's long since decided to hand over his investigation service to her if/when he retires.
  • Identical Grandson: Garrett and Barate speculate that the culprits in Gilden Latten Bones might be the throwback offspring of Shadowslinger's cousin Jane. Subverted; they're actually Jane herself, and other relatives long thought dead, now rejuvenated by stolen life force.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All books in the series follow an Adjective-Metal-Noun format, which may soon prove a problem when Cook runs out of metals. A recent one being Gilded Latten Bones, he's already dipping into the obscure...
  • Implausible Hair Color: The sexy, leather-clad female villains in Gilded Latten Bones have oddly-gray hair. Not so odd, once you know they're old ladies who've used stolen life force to make themselves younger. As hair is made up of dead cells, it didn't get younger with the rest of them.
  • I Have Many Names: Jill Craight - birth name Hester Podegill - uses a different name with practically everybody she knows. Pokey Pigota reputedly used so many aliases in his work that he was once hired to investigate himself. Imar and Imara have a lot of titles, as is to be expected for deities.
  • Impossibly Tacky Clothes: Winger's taste in dresses leaves people's eyes watering. Sextons from the Cult of A-Laf dress in green plaid pants so hideous, Garrett nicknames them the Ugly Pants Gang. The coat Garrett borrows for a while in Cruel Zinc Melodies was deliberately designed to be this trope by a prankster.
  • Inconsistent Coloring: Furious Tide of Light has eyes that've changed color practically every time Garrett looks at her.
  • Indian Burial Ground: One possible cause for the World Theater haunting that's shot down right away: it's built on a block of former Tenderloin properties with no history of ghosts, which presumably would've shown up sooner if they'd been constructed on an old burial ground.
  • Innocent Aliens: Angry Lead Skies has several groups of "silver elves", most of which were innocently trying to spread knowledge and peace throughout the universe. Of course, It doesn't really work out that way.
  • Insistent Terminology: Jackals, not dogs.
  • Invisibility Cloak: Magodor's magical cord can generate an Invisibility Sack, which is nearly as good for stationary concealment but a lot more awkward to move around in.
  • Kill It with Fire: How Garrett and Morley deal with vampires in the first book.
  • Knight in Sour Armor: Garrett, big time. Glory Mooncalled is implied to have become this in the wake of his Cantard republic's fall.
  • Knight Templar: Deal Relway.
  • Language Equals Thought: The dark elfin language uses the same word for "mercy" as for "madness". Creepily, it's a half-dark elf who matter-of-factly tells Garrett this.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: The Dead Man tampers with Kolda's mind so that the apothecary will never recall anything he learns while at Garrett's place.
  • Last of His Kind: Penny Dreadful is the last priestess of A-Laf.
  • Latex Perfection: How Casey passes for human in Angry Lead Skies.
  • Long-Lost Relative: A few sorcerous villains in the later books turn out to be relatives of the Algardas or their neighbors, who'd been in hiding and/or had been thought deceased. Plausible, as the sorcerers of the Hill have evidently been intermarrying for centuries, so any Hill-caliber spellcaster is bound to be related to some degree.
  • Mad Artist: Bird from Gilden Latten Bones subverts this, as he really does hear ghostly voices. And they keep talking through his mouth after he's dead.
  • Mad Libs Catch Phrase: Seems like every book has a new permutation of a snarky "flying pigs" reference.
  • Madness Mantra: "How're you doing? I'm Ivy."
  • Magic Ais Magic A: Magic is practical and useful as a tool that leads to people being feared nobility.
  • Magicians Are Wizards: More like Magicians Are Gods, when it's played with in book 8. Magodor's demonstration of her enchanted cord's powers is exactly like the stage conjuring routines which Garrett has seen before, except in her case it's all for real.
  • Mama Bear: Raver Styx was scary enough before anyone threatened her kids. It's fear of this that drives the villains to become even more murderous, to cover their butts against her anticipated wrath. Which is understandable, given what she does to the ones who killed her son.
    • Shadowslinger is set up as the ultimate Grandma Bear in Wicked Bronze Ambition. Triple subverted, as she suffers a stroke that apparently takes her out of the action, unable to avenge Strafa and protect Kevans. Then reveals she's been faking her incapacity, suggesting a she-bear rampage is back on the menu. Then reveals it's not going to happen, because Shadowslinger's own botched spell killed Strafa and Garrett's other allies take down the Operators without her help.
  • Meaningful Funeral: In Wicked Bronze Ambition.
  • Meat Versus Veggies: A regular topic of casual back-and-forth carping between Garrett and Morley.
  • Medieval Stasis: Kiiiiiiind of. Although certain things have advanced, weapons are straight out of the dark ages and electricity is nowhere to be seen outside of a summer storm. Other things suggest a much more urban and modern setting though, for instance: indoor plumbing is available but not always common.
    • Houses and buildings are usually multiple stories, yet Garrett's entire ground floor (in a four bedroom house, mind you) has only one window. Granted, that's because most people bricked up their ground-floor windows when the war's immigrants and refugees brought a crime wave with them.
    • Subverted from Angry Lead Skies onward, as technology and manufacturing start advancing very quickly.
  • Memetic Badass: Glory Mooncalled is an in-universe example.
  • Middle Child Syndrome: Rhafi is almost completely overshadowed by his siblings, and what-little personality he displays suggests he's a bit of a jerk. Even Cook seems to have forgotten him, mentioning Kip's mother and sister in later books, but not his brother.
  • Missing Mom: Inverted by Winger, who is somebody's mom who got fed up and left to start a new life.
  • Mission Control: The Dead Man invokes this trope on a couple of cases, by way of his psychic influence over Mr. Big.
  • Motor Mouth: Dojango Roze couldn't shut up if you paid him. This makes him a marginally-less extreme example than the Goddamn Parrot, who couldn't shut up if you drowned him. Unless the Dead Man is riding shotgun in his brain.
    • Rocky from Cruel Zinc Melodies is a blazing fast talker... for a troll. Which means he can keep up with a human's conversation.
  • Mr. Imagination: Kip Prose is so much this trope that the Dead Man has difficulty sorting out what's a real memory in the boy's head from what's a wish-fulfillment fantasy.
  • Mysterious Watcher: Lurking Felhske plays this role for various employers in different books.
  • Mythology Gag: The grandmother of Furious Tide of Light is herself a powerful sorceress, using the name Shadowslinger. The second book of The Black Company series is titled Shadows Linger.
  • Naked People Trapped Outside: 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.
  • Narrative Profanity Filter: A necessity with the Goddamn Parrot, as actually quoting the bird would probably mean relegating the novels in which Mr. Big appears to "adult" bookstores only.
  • Nephewism: Morley spends a few books riding herd on his nephew Narcisio (aka "Spud"). Reportedly, his sister had the strange idea that spending time with a professional assassin would straighten the obnoxious youth out.
  • Never Mess with Granny: More like Never Mess With Her Grandkids, if it's Constance Algarda or Orchidia Hedley-Farfoul - aka the Shadowslinger and the Black Orchid - you're talking about. Moonblight is formidable also, and briefly steps away from the campaign against the Operators to attend the birth of a grandchild.
  • The Nicknamer: Winger does this constantly, giving people embarrassing ones.
  • No Guy Wants an Amazon: Garrett's initial reaction to Winger.
  • No Name Given: Garret's first name has never been revealed. The Dead Man's real name has never been stated either. Nor Playmate's.
    • Winger doesn't use a first name, and even "Winger" itself may be an alias chosen so the family she deserted won't track her down.
  • No One Sees the Boss: Crime boss Chodo Contague has a stroke and his daughter Belinda takes over his organization, claiming to relay his orders. Also how Tama Montezuma manipulated the Call and the Wolves, by "passing on" faked orders in Marengo North English's name.
  • Nobody Poops: Averted. His pressing need to urinate upon waking averts one of the Windwalker's attempts to seduce Garrett in Gilded Latten Bones, and a bedridden Morley needs to be "cleaned up" regularly by his ratwomen nurses in the same book.
  • Nonhuman Humanoid Hybrid: Doris and Marsha the groll (giant/troll) brothers. Slim, the elf/troll who delivers Garrett's beer kegs.
  • Non-Human Sidekick: Pular Singe. The Dead Man is alternately called a "sidekick" and a partner by Garrett, although the Loghyr himself thinks it's the other way around.
  • Non-Idle Rich: As much as Garrett disrespects Karenta's noble class, even he gives them credit for participating fully in the Cantard War, either as battlefield sorcerers or as officers who lead (albeit not so competently) from the front.
  • Non-Indicative First Episode: The first book in the series (Sweet Silver Blues) is less of a mystery and more of a fairly straightforward adventure story, albeit told in a noir style.
  • Noodle Incident: The time Garrett returned a borrowed coach to Playmate without remembering to remove the corpse stashed inside it, first.
  • No One Sees the Boss: How Tama Montezuma manipulated the Call and the Wolves, by "passing on" faked orders in Marengo North English's name.
  • The Nose Knows: Ratfolk have an exceptional sense of smell, which their trackers (Singe especially) employ to follow people's trails.
  • No Such Agency: The Unpublished Committee for Royal Security, or whatever they're calling themselves this week.
  • Obfuscating Disability: Pular Singe initially concealed her intelligence from the ratman gang boss, Reliance, by pretending to be deaf. Shadowslinger exaggerates the effects of her stroke to conceal her true condition from both enemies and family.
  • One-Man Army: Saucerhead Tharpe is justifiably called this by Skredli, whose gang of ogres Tharpe waded through like they were sick kittens.
  • One-Steve Limit: Averted with Morley's crew, which included one "Sarge" who died in Bitter Gold Hearts and another who first appeared in Red Iron Nights. Easily justifiable, as the Cantard War produced a lot of sergeants.
  • One-Winged Angel: The last unaccounted-for member of the Black Dragon Valsung shapeshifters resorts to this at Max Weider's party in an attempt to rescue the others, only to get zapped repeatedly by Perilous Spite.
  • "Open!" Says Me: Saucerhead's favored means of entry into locked rooms. Averted by Morley, who's good at lockpicking and claims "I don't do Thon-Gore the Learning Disabled". Played with in Garrett's case, as it works fine for a dry-rotted egress at the Stantnor estate but fails when he tries it on a sturdier door. Slither kicks a door repeatedly to loosen it up before slamming through shoulder-first.
  • Orderlies are Creeps: Not only are the Bledsoe asylum's orderlies abusive to the patients, but the Rainmaker bribes them to toss personal enemies in with the crazies on the sly.
  • Orphaned Punchline: "A troll, an ogre, and a barbarian walk into a bar. The elephant behind the bar says 'We don't serve'..." "Mice are never amusing." We don't know what linked this joke's opening and punch lines.
  • Our Demons Are Different: Demons are discussed in Wicked Bronze Ambition, albeit only in regards to Dread Companions. Little is said about their nature or abilities, but the existence of a "demon realm" from which they can be summoned is mentioned, as is the fact that most demons are fed up with sorcerers and/or humans, so only the bottom-of-the-barrel riffraff actually heed such calls anymore.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Cruel Zinc Melodies. Very different, they're sentient fungus.
  • Our Gnomes Are Weirder: The Tates are a recurring family of them. 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 Deadpan Snarker; real gnomes, when shown, could barely reach his kneecaps.
  • Our Liches Are Different: The Dead Man is a non-evil psychic variant. Subverted with the witch Dire Cabochon, whom Garrett suspects might've enchanted her dying body to revive if disturbed, so he keeps his distance from her remains.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Vampirism is treated strictly as The Virus and can be cured somewhat easily if it's in the early stages.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: The draugs from Old Tin Sorrows. The "thread men" (aka Artificial type) from Gilded Latten Bones.
  • Out of Character Is Serious Business: Garrett's friends know he's taking a case very seriously if he overcomes his usual distaste for horses so he can ride around the city faster.
  • Out-of-Genre Experience: Angry Lead Skies, which adds Grey-style aliens to the series' already-genre-blending mix.
  • The Paralyzer: The "silver elves" from Angry Lead Skies carry non-lethal stunning weapons.
  • Parental Incest: Several of the named female characters have a backstory of being sexually molested by their stepfathers (war casualties resulted in a lot of widows who remarried). And then there's the powerful sorceress "Furious Tide of Light", who had her father's daughter — for extra Squick, it's hinted that her mother was his mother, too, although this was apparently later proven incorrect. Most bizarrely, Garrett notes in the latest book that these two are some of the nicest, most admirable people in the sorcerous power structure. Good Lord.
    • Amber dePena subverted this trope by threatening to tell her Stormwarden mother. Not so, her foster sister Amiranda, who wound up pregnant by Amber's dad.
  • Pegasus: Used by Cat to rescue Garrett from the Shayir.
  • People Jars: Shapeshifter offspring develop in vats of yeasty-smelling liquid. The production of "thread men" requires them to be submerged in glass tanks.
  • The Phoenix: Brother Brittigarn tells Garrett about phoenixes in Whispering Nickel Idols. The Dead Man later reveals that most of what he'd said was untrue.
  • Pirate Parrot: Several jokes about this trope crop up during Mr. Big's tenure in the series.
  • Playing with Fire: Fred Blaine, aka the firelord Fox Direheart, really cuts loose with this trope when Garrett finally leads him to Grange Cleaver's hiding place.
  • Poison and Cure Gambit: Mid-tier gangster Teacher White tries to coerce Garrett into locating someone for him by dosing him with a poison that will make him stop breathing after a while, then promising the antidote if Garrett delivers. This ploy fails because the Dead Man psychically maintains Garrett's breathing until the drug is washed out of his system.
  • Poke in the Third Eye: The A-Laf deacon has "mousetraps" implanted in his psyche, making it more of a challenge for the Dead Man to read his mind. Telepathically sensing the presence that attacks Garrett's house in Gilded Latten Bones briefly leaves the Loghyr overwhelmed by revulsion at what he detects.
  • Politically Incorrect Hero: Garrett himself starts out sharing the typical human disdain for ratpeople, but regrets it later once he gets to know Singe and John Stretch.
  • Precision F-Strike: Morley and Tinnie don't cuss often, but Morley does say "Shit!" when a carnivorous thunder lizard sticks its head in the window of a coach he's riding in, and Tinnie does the same when several Hill sorcerers are attacked at the World's construction site in Cruel Zinc Melodies.
  • Psychic Block Defense: Kip Prose's wire hairnets are designed to counter the Dead Man's mind-reading powers. In Gilded Latten Bones, it's suggested that he eventually finds a way past them, but lets visitors believe the devices are working.
    • Garrett's simple overexposure to The Dead Man and his psychic abilities have left his mind much harder to read for other psychics.
  • Psycho Serum: Playmate, normally a sweet-tempered pacifist, goes berserk and busts up Morley's place after a cook puts angelweed in his salad as a prank. This sets the stage for Morley's refit of the Joy House as The Palms.
  • Puppet King: Puppet kingpin, rather, when Belinda takes over the Outfit by putting words in her stroke-impaired father's mouth. Sadler and Crask briefly did the same, until she supplanted them and chased them out of town.
  • Rags to Riches: Pular Singe. Not yet all that rich by human standards, but already an unprecedented success among ratpeople, and she's still young.
  • Really Gets Around: Kayne Prose has three children by three different fathers.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: Prince Rupert.
  • Recycled IN SPACE!: The early novels were essentially Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe in a fantasy setting.
  • Refuge in Audacity: Nobody believes Garrett's story about a dragon under the World Theater, so he ensures everyone will think that Max Weider'd sent him to start a rumor about a dragon to drum up publicity for his new playhouse.
  • Religion of Evil: The Sons of Hammon. The despair-fomenting followers of A-Laf.
  • Restraining Bolt: In Gilded Latten Bones, a minion of the villains is psychically pre-programmed to die of heart failure if the Dead Man tries to probe his mind. This backfires when the Loghyr manages to quash the implanted command, then explains to the minion how his superiors has set him up to die.
  • Returning War Vet: Every adult human male in Karenta has been this trope, and TunFaire gets inundated with them after the Cantard War ends. The Call and lesser free-corps of Faded Steel Heat are made up of these guys. So is the entire staff (save Cook) of General Stantnor's estate.
  • Rodents of Unusual Size: Ratpeople can stand up to five feet tall if they straighten up from their usual slouch. John Stretch brings the biggest normal rats he can find to clear bugs out of the World Theater in Cruel Zinc Melodies, including one Garrett describes as "the undisputed heavyweight champion barbarian hero of all ratdom".
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: Crown Prince Rupert takes an active hand in getting the Civil Guard up and running, and tries to recruit Garrett as his personal agent/investigator. Averted by his brother the King, who reportedly spent all his time partying and sleeping late after the war ended.
    • The Hill nobility, with rare exceptions, led from the front during the Cantard War. Even noblewomen had to serve their five if they had a talent for sorcery.
  • Rule #1: Dotes' First Law: Never get involved with a woman crazier than you.
  • Running Gag: Nobody believes that Mr. Big (AKA 'The Goddamned Parrot') can really talk on his own.
    • Garrett's door is routinely damaged, even after he replaces it with a stronger door.
    • Nearly every book sees Garrett's narration come up with a new permutation of a "flying pigs" reference.
    • Some examples are specific to individual novels, like everybody and their dog leaving stolen goat carts outside Garrett's place in Whispering Nickel Idols, or everyone punching or poking Garrett in the same increasingly-sore arm in Wicked Bronze Ambition.
    • In and after Cruel Zinc Melodies, any time somebody mentions that novel's giant bugs, somebody else is sure to voice their relief that the Faction never made any giant spiders.
  • Running on All Fours: Ratpeople sometimes do this when they need to move fast and have their hands free.
  • Scary Librarian: Mistress Krine, who is equally fierce about keeping Garrett away from the Royal Library's books and her underling, Linda Lee.
  • Screw You, Elves!: Or, often, Screw You, Dead Loghyr!
  • Sdrawkcab Name: Racialist extremist Davenport has identical-twin thugs at his beck and call, named Otto and Otah. Even being beaten to a pulp, Garrett snarks to himself about how stupid their names' mirror-image pronunciation is.
  • Secret Police: Deal Relway's Unpublished Committee for Royal Security, or whatever it's calling itself this week.
  • Seeing Through Another's Eyes: How the Dead Man makes use of the Goddamn Parrot. Garrett's sure the Loghyr had tried to do the same with him as well, but maintaining such a real-time link to a sentient creature's senses proved too difficult.
    • In Gilded Latten Bones, Garrett experiences a memory through Singe's eyes, ears and nose, as facilitated by the Dead Man.
  • Shapeshifter Default Form: Shapeshifters fall under type B. It's mentioned that one of the unnamed shifters takes on the looks of a soldier he fought with during the war, several decades before the current story and a few months before the entire group of shapeshifters pull a Faceā€“Heel Turn.
  • She Is the King: Having a Sweet Polly Oliver on the throne is a common theatrical plot-device during Gilded Latten Bones.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: Plenty, with their level of trauma varying from Tom Weider's hopeless insanity to Snake Bradon's paranoia and living alone in a stable. Garrett himself has some nasty memories of the Cantard islands, although he downplays how much they affect him many years later.
  • Shock and Awe: Lightning is a favored weapon of stormwardens, and Raver Styx uses a handful of conjured sparks as a wordless threat.
  • Shout-Out:
  • The scene where Garrett is hired in Old Tin Sorrows is lifted intact from The Big Sleep.
    • In Angry Lead Skies, Garrett cites a Noodle Incident as proof of Winger's boneheadedness, in which she stole a singing sword that wouldn't shut up. His description of its song is a snarky summary of The Ring of the Nibelung.
    • Garrett's having only one name could be a reference to Spenser.
      • Doubly appropriate since Morley could easily stand in for Hawk.
    • Speaking of Morley: his name is one to the children's song "Mairzy Doats". Doubly funny since Morley himself is a vegetarian.
    • Garrett's lasting feelings for Eleanor from Old Tin Sorrows and his attachment to her portrait may be an oblique nod to Laura, albeit with a ghost rather than a woman whose death was mis-reported.
    • Saucerhead slugs a camel in Angry Lead Skies.
    • When he originally took over the Outfit, Chodo got rid of some potentially-troublesome underbosses by bashing their heads in with a centaur tribal mace.
    • Garrett's pursuit by Nog the Inescapable in Petty Pewter Gods is an homage to "Liane the Wanderer", one of the Dying Earth short stories.
  • Shovel Strike: How Slither deals with the "little booger".
  • Signature Scent: Lurking Felhske has a health condition that gives him an unique body odor, which even humans can detect. This gives away his presence at times, especially when he also forgets to bathe.
  • Silver Has Mystic Powers: Silver is the "fuel" that powers sorcery, making it a resource so precious that Karenta and Venageta spend three generations battling over possession of the Cantard's silver mines. Precisely how sorcerers make use of silver is never shown, but their dependency on it is mentioned in nearly all the early books.
  • Speaks Fluent Animal: John Stretch (Singe's brother) can talk to rats.
  • Spontaneous Human Combustion: Reports of people bursting into flames circulate in a couple of the novels, as a rumor going around the city. Garrett finally looks into the matter in Whispering Nickel Idols, and learns that Chodo Contague triggered some of them with the help of some pyrogenic rocks planted by his lawyer. Saucerhead also tracks down some cases that turn out to be ordinary accidental fires, under circumstances very similar to the Real Life mishaps that inspired the Spontaneous Human Combustion Urban Legend in the first place.
  • Spooky Painting: Eleanor's painting, which only Garrett can see move (he even talks to it and half-jokes that he's in love with her), although others are disturbed by it. It may or may not be possessed by her ghost.
  • Square-Cube Law: The giant bugs from Cruel Zinc Melodies aren't very agile, and some die when they attempt to fly and their wings aren't strong enough to hold up their proportionately-greater weight.
  • Status Quo Is God: Used fairly straight for the first few books, then zigzagged in the wake of Dread Brass Shadows, and finally thrown out completely with Faded Steel Heat.
  • Stock Gods: Several of the Godoroth and Shayir conform to standard Fantasy Pantheon archetypes (grumpy Grandpa God, love goddess, messenger, huntress, top god's embittered wife), so much so that Garrett can guess their personalities on sight. Imar and Lang are such cliche examples of "boss" gods for their pantheons that a dwarf idol-maker produced pewter figurines for their respective temples from the same mold.
  • Stout Strength: Bishoff Hullar, owner of a taxi-dance bar. "Big Momma", manager of the Blue Bottle.
  • Stupid Crooks: TunFaire boasts a lot of these. "Bruno" is a local slang nickname for a dumb mook.
  • Superpowerful Genetics: Magical talents are implied to be hereditary, and concentrated in Karenta's upperclass families. Magical abilities in commoners are suspected to derive from a (slumming) noble ancestor.
  • Super-Soldier: Karenta is implied to have utilized magic-based variants of these, including programmed berserkers like Slither and spell-slinging "Nighthunters" who eliminated the Cantard's indigenous vampires and other predators.
  • Super-Speed: Jorken, the Godoroth messenger-god. Also the "little booger".
  • Sweet and Sour Grapes: All the time, in fact it's rare that a case ever ends the way Garret would like it to.
  • Sweet Polly Oliver: Penny passes for a boy when she first arrives in TunFaire. Donni Pell is mentioned as doing this on occasion, although Garrett never witnesses her being "Donny".
  • Sympathy for the Devil: "You could weep for the pain of the child while knowing you had to destroy the monster it had become."
  • The Syndicate: Chodo Contague is the evil crime lord with a hand in nearly every dirty deal going on in TunFaire.
  • Takes Ten to Hold: This is how Skredli's ogres took down Saucerhead during their attack on Amiranda, how the Joy House crew restrained Playmate when he was drugged with angelweed, and how a gang of ratmen tried to take down Garrett to reclaim Singe for their boss.
  • The Tease: Giorgi "Nicks" Nicholas, Kayne Prose, and Carla Lindo Ramada are the strongest of many, many examples.
  • Theme Naming: Most ratpeople-names consist of ordinary non-name words, like Reliance, Humility or Shote. Grays, a minority strain of ratperson, use names like "Evil Lin" or "Wicked Pat".
    • Amber DePena tells Garrett that the private-security mooks who patrol her neighborhood are brothers named Eenie, Meenie, Meinie, and Moe. It's unclear if these are actual names or just nicknames conferred on the four men by taunting rich kids.
  • Those Two Guys: Puddle and Sarge in the later books.
  • Title Drop: Starting with Cold Copper Tears. Garret will sometimes provide an alternate Title Drop for the current story. They're almost always Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • To Absent Friends: Grubb Gruber's Leatherneck Heaven, where Garrett and other veteran Marines go to get drunk toasting the guys who didn't make it home.
  • Tongue Twister: Bittegurn Brittigarn has difficulty saying his own name when he's drunk. Moonslight taunts Garrett about his least favorite food with a "pick a peck of pickled peppers" reference.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Winger at times, although she's also proved Too Lucky To Die up to now.
  • Touched by Vorlons: To a lesser extent. In their desperate attempt to get home, the formerly Innocent Aliens fill Kip Prose's head up with all sorts of scientific know-how and ideas for amazing inventions that he probably never would have come up with on his own. The genius stays with him long after they're gone.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Singe and steamed apples.
  • Trash of the Titans: Barking Dog Amato's apartment is knee-deep in discarded paper and food wrappers, with rooms full of piled-up handbills.
  • Trojan Horse: Garrett sneaks into the villains' ceremony in Wicked Bronze Ambition by hiding in a coffin. In Petty Pewter Gods, he slips out of his house without being seen inside an old wine barrel.
  • True Companions: Garrett, Dean, Singe, and even the Dead Man eventually for a sort of family unit.
  • True Craftsman: Max Weider and the brewmasters who work for him have this trope's attitude towards beer, which accounts for much of Garrett's loyalty to the Weiders.
  • The Undead: Loads of them. The vampires, for one (although it's stated that Vampirism is actually a disease) . The Dead Man is a Loghyr, which is a species that after death always become spirits haunting their corpses until the body is completely destroyed. In this case, a spirit that can do a little mind control, lift things up, and communicate with (read: insult) Garrett telepathically. Both zombies and draugs pop up in the books too.
  • Uneven Hybrid: The Tates have a bit of elf blood on both sides of the family, although it's not obvious from their looks. Dean and his nieces likewise have a little troll blood on both sides, which unfortunately isn't as concealed. Morley's ancestry is a bit more dark elf than human, although details aren't specified.
  • Unusual Ears: The "silver elves" completely lack external ears, a fact that convinces the Dead Man they're not just another Heinz Hybrid combo of local humanoids.
  • Unusual Euphemism: The "pirates" from Deadly Quicksilver Lies, or the "silver elves" from Angry Lead Skies.
  • Uplifted Animal: The ratpeople were created by past sorcerers' experimentation on ordinary rats. Some strains are more rat-like than others.
    • In Wicked Bronze Ambition, it's revealed that at least some flying thunder lizards were also Uplifted, and that it happened accidentally to Hagekagome.
  • Up Marketing: Max Weider and the Tates promote several of Amalgamated's products via snob appeal, artificially elevating prices and bad-mouthing knockoffs of their wares.
    • Morley's conversion of the Joy House into The Palms, at least until the novelty wore off and his customers thinned out.
  • Verbal Tic: Dojango Roze uses his favorite word a lot, actually.
  • Villainous Rescue: Happens a few times when Garrett is caught between rival factions.
  • Vocal Dissonance: Constance Algarda the Shadowslinger, an otherwise-terrifying sorceress, has a voice like an eight-year-old girl. Her son usually speaks for her to preserve her scary image.
  • Vomiting Cop: Afflicts a lot of red caps during the raid on a necromantic laboratory, General Block included.
  • Walking Arsenal: Garrett borrows a sword, helmet, shield and ax from a little dwarf girl, who complains that he's leaving her with nothing. He points out that she's still got her other sword, her daggers, her truncheon, her boots, her teeth, and whatever she's got in her trousseau, which should suffice for the couple of blocks she's got to walk.
  • War Is Hell: Part of the backstory for almost every male Karentine human over the age of twenty-three, for that matter.
  • What Happened to the Mousers?: The Luck of A-Lat only appear in Whispering Nickel Idols, and their whereabouts are unmentioned even after Penny, their caretaker, moves into the Macunado Street house.
    • Nothing more is said of the "dragon" under the World Theater after Cruel Zinc Melodies, so we never learn if it managed to contact others of its kind.
  • Wicked Witch: Shadowslinger works hard to maintain this image. Garrett himself isn't sure how much of her act is a ruse. The Serpent, however, is the real thing.
  • Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Garret and Saucerhead are both suckers for anything needy and female, to the point where Garrett needlessly risks his neck when he doesn't have to, and Saucerhead took out several ogres for killing a girl he was supposed to protect.
  • Younger Than They Look: Melondie Kadare's tribe of pixies age much faster than humans, and live out their whole lifespans over the course of a few books.
    • Carter Stockwell still looks like a young man in his twenties, despite having served in the Cantard more than fifty years ago. Which makes sense, as he's a shapeshifter who never bothered to age up his 'default' guise.
  • Your Mind Makes It Real: Exploited by Tara Chayne in Wicked Bronze Ambition, when she convinces Garrett's busybody neighbor to lay off him by (falsely) convincing the woman that she's been cursed to suffer asthmatic attacks every time she speaks Garrett's name. Tara then explains to Garrett that such a precise curse would be impossible to cast without loads of preparatory work, but the woman's own anxieties will cause psychosomatic feelings of suffocation if she tries to get the neighborhood to gang up on Garrett again.

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