History Literature / NurseryCrime

* ExternalCombustion: [[spoiler: How Lord Spongg intended to kill Humpty. Instead,]] Jack ends up on the receiving end of it.

* BombDisposal: [[spoiler: Jack has to do this near the end, with an elaborate puzzle involving a two-way mirror, an identical [[TwinSwitch twin]] butler, and a [[ItMakesSenseInContext rapidly-curling sandwich.]] ]]

* TheCoroner: Mrs. Singh

* CaptainErsatz: Friedland Chymes is an only-slightly-exaggerated SherlockHolmes. He has an assistant called Flotsam, and a reputation for seeing straight through hugely complex cases based on a few minor details - in one instance, he identifies the murderer based on the word he played in a TabletopGame/{{Scrabble}} game. (However, it is mentioned elsewhere that Sherlock Holmes himself existed in this world. [[spoiler: Also a subversion, as Chymes is eventually revealed to be the polar opposite of Sherlock Holmes--a corrupt, selfish, incompetent, opportunistic, backstabbing fraud, who regularly steals credit from other, worthier detectives and even fakes his own investigations for the sake of popularity.]]

* ChestBurster: How [[spoiler: Humpty]] ultimately died. [[spoiler: Doctor Quatt had been secretly incubating a mutant experimental creature inside him, fittingly for an egg. When the creature hatched, an alien being burst of of Humpty's body, ending his life.

* MadScientist: Dr. Quatt, who despite being a psychologist spends all her time creating creepy MixAndMaxCreatures by grafting, and has bizzarre, grandiose plans involving the same.

!!!Tropes shared throughout the series:
[[folder:In General]]

!!!Tropes present in ''The Big Over Easy'':

!!!Tropes present in ''The Fourth Bear'':

* AllMythsAreTrue

* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Reading, England.

* MassiveMultiplayerCrossover

* {{Cuckold}}: [[spoiler: Solomon Grundy]]

* EccentricMillionaire: Lord Randolph Spongg.

* MadScientist: Dr. Quatt

* WhiteDwarfStarlet: Lola Vavoom.

* ByTheBookCop: David Copperfield.

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: [[spoiler: Biskey-Batt and the Small Olympian Bear]].
* DealWithTheDevil: The secret behind [[spoiler: [[Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray Dorian Gray's]] cars]]

* DeadAllAlong: [[spoiler: the Quangle Wangle]]

* TheGhost: Angus McGuffin in ''The Fourth Bear''.

* ImMelting: [[spoiler: The demise of the Gingerbread Man.]]
* KillItWithWater: [[spoiler: How Jack, true to the fairy tale, defeats the Gingerbread Man.]]

* TheMenInBlack: The Men in Green, [[DiscussedTrope discussed]] in a chapter-opening blurb.
* MotiveRant: [[spoiler: Demetrios talks in extensive detail about the creation of the Gingerbread Man when Jack calls him out as the creator.]]

* TheAllegedCar: Jack's cars. He chooses bland, poorly designed 70's British cars to differentiate himself from Chymes. In ''The Fourth Bear'', he purchases a car designated "Feeblest British car of the seventies." His cars have a tendency to end up wrecked by the end of the book.
** His car in The Fourth Bear is actually this trope weaponized. [[spoiler: The odometer runs backward, and once it reaches zero, the car explodes, killing the villain in the process. It even has a portrait inside that gets more and more damaged a la Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray- who happens to be the guy who sold him the car.]]

* ArbitrarySkepticism: If you're paying attention in ''The Fourth Bear'', you might notice that Jack's theories aren't any crazier than Chymes' were, yet Briggs doesn't believe him. [[spoiler:Because Chymes turned out to be a fraud.]]
** Briggs has a real problem with this in general. Despite living in a world where nursery rhyme characters are demonstrably real he is unwilling to believe almost any theory remotely connected to them.

* ContinuityNod: Jack makes an early reference to his happily married family life that's actually a joke for anyone who's read ''The Well Of Lost Plots'' and remembers the early drafts of "Caversham Heights".

* {{Expy}}: Jack, Mary, Lord Randolph Spongg, Lola Vavoom, and Prometheus, from Jasper Fforde's Literature/ThursdayNext series.

* 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 [[TomatoInTheMirror Jack does show some]] [[GenreSavvy flashes of insight.]]
** [[spoiler: In The Fourth Bear, it's revealed that Jack did know, but that he had actively forced himself to forget.]]

* WriterOnBoard: In ''The Big Over Easy'' Fforde's fears of AdaptationDecay shine through when an actress' career is destroyed after she appears in a terrible film based on ''[[Literature/ThursdayNext The Eyre Affair]].''

* BatDeduction: This is actually invoked by many detectives, as it makes for more interesting stories and adaptations. Jack is one of the few who actually prefers to, y'know, investigate crimes. Chymes is easily the most popular detective in Reading. In one of his press confrences he explains that he deduced from some custard on the victim's sock that he was trying to send a message to Chymes, the only person smart enough to figure it out. Custard in French is "creme anglaise", which is an anagram for one of the suspects. Unfortunately, anagram-based clues had recently been ruled inadmissable, so he had to DNA test the crumbs around the fatal gunshot wound, which turned out to be from a certain bakery chain, which they staked out and caught the suspect fingered earlier entering. She immediately confessed.
** Towards the end, we find that [[spoiler:Friedland Chymes basically faked a case entirely; the person who confessed and got "jailed" was an actor. The implication is that most of his cases, were faked, as well as those of lots of other detectives, which means that there are plenty of murders running around scot-free.]]

* CaptainErsatz: Friedland Chymes is an only-slightly-exaggerated SherlockHolmes. He has an assistant called Flotsam, and a reputation for seeing straight through hugely complex cases based on a few minor details - in one instance, he identifies the murderer based on the word he played in a TabletopGame/{{Scrabble}} game. (However, it is mentioned elsewhere that Sherlock Holmes himself existed in this world.)
** [[spoiler: Also a subversion, as Chymes is eventually revealed to be the polar opposite of Sherlock Holmes--a corrupt, selfish, incompetent, opportunistic, backstabbing fraud, who regularly steals credit from other, worthier detectives and even fakes his own investigations for the sake of popularity.]]

* 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 [[Literature/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]].

* NoFourthWall: An inspector threatens to write a report about Jack's inadequacy as an NCD officer. He convinces her otherwise by pointing her out as an incidental character with whose only purpose in life is [[ThresholdGuardians to be a problem for him to get around]]. She breaks down in existential despair until he promises to write a complete {{backstory}} for her.

*** Characters frequently commenting on Fforde's use of language. Mary mentioning after a motorcycle drives away that "screeching tyre" doesn't look or sound right despite being perfectly correct.

* AffablyEvil: In ''The Big Over Easy'', [[spoiler: Lord Spongg is extremely sympathetic and helpful to the investigators, but leads a bioterrorism plot, tries to kill Jack (twice!) and Humpty.]]

** Towards the end of the first book, we find that [[spoiler:Friedland Chymes basically faked a case entirely; the person who confessed and got "jailed" was an actor. The implication is that most of his cases, were faked, as well as those of lots of other detectives, which means that there are plenty of murders running around scot-free.]]

* BombDisposal: [[spoiler: Jack has to do this near the end of ''The Big Over-Easy'', with an elaborate puzzle involving a two-way mirror, an identical [[TwinSwitch twin]] butler, and a [[ItMakesSenseInContext rapidly-curling sandwich.]] ]]

* ChekhovsGun: In ''The Big Over Easy'', Jack's mother repeatedly asks him when he's going to [[spoiler: remove his three bags (full) of wool from her shed]], which just fits into the mileu of jokes, puns and references to {{nursery rhyme}}s until the bags [[spoiler: cushion his fall from the beanstalk, saving his life.]]

* LiteraryAllusionTitle: The title is a pun on ''Film/TheBigEasy''.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: In ''The Big Over Easy'', [[spoiler: Lord Spongg's desire to revive his company is understandable given its upstanding role in the community and for the workers, but his plan involves several murders and infecting the entire city with verrucas.]]

* AppliedPhlebotinum: [[spoiler: Cold fusion from cucumbers]] in ''The Fourth Bear''.
* AxCrazy: The Gingerbread Man. Yes, you read that correctly.
* ByTheBookCop: David Copperfield in ''The Fourth Bear''.

* ConspiracyTheorist: Agent Parks in ''The Fourth Bear''. The community has a popular magazine.
* CorruptCorporateExecutive: [[spoiler: Biskey-Batt and the Small Olympian Bear]] in ''The Fourth Bear''.

* DeadAllAlong: [[spoiler: the Quangle Wangle]] in The Fourth Bear

* HandWave: Parks, a conspiracy theorist in ''The Fourth Bear'' "had latched onto Jack's outlandish explanation without too much difficulty, as should you."

* LamePunReaction: Elevated to epic art form in ''The Fourth Bear'', where inane gossip made throughout the book turns out much later to have been the set-up for an incredibly long punchline similar to the classic "Peter Piper picks a pepper" tongue-twister. The characters even [[BreakingTheFourthWall break the fourth wall]] to complain about the pun. [[spoiler:"Pippa Piper picked Peck over Pickle or Pepper? Which of the Peck pair did Pippa Piper pick?" "Peter 'Pockmarked' Peck of Palmer Park! He was the Peck that Pippa 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 [[Creator/JasperFforde he]] gets away with it".
* LiteraryAllusionTitle: The title is a pun based on Film/TheThirdMan

* LookBehindYou: Subverted at the end of ''The Fourth Bear'': [[spoiler: Bisky-Batt was right, the Small Olymbian Bear really was behind Jack- and armed!]]
* LivingMacGuffin: The [[LampshadeHanging aptly-named]] Angus McGuffin in ''The Fourth Bear''. Everyone's looking for him, he seems to be "involved" in all the plots of the story, but he never actually appears.
* TheMenInBlack: The Men in Green in ''The Fourth Bear.'' [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] in a chapter-opening blurb.
* MotiveRant: In ''The Fourth Bear'', [[spoiler: Demetrios talks in extensive detail about the creation of the Gingerbread Man when Jack calls him out as the creator.]]

* TalkingAnimal: ''The Fourth Bear''

* AnomalousArt: Jack buys a car from someone named Dorian Gray, which contains a portrait of the car in the back. In a nod to ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'', the car is immune to damage, as anything happens to the picture instead, as Jack finds out after he wrecks his car a few times only to for it to repair itself. But once the odometer on the car reaches zero, the car destroys itself spectacularly, dragging the owner into hell.

* FantasyKitchenSink: See TheyWalkAmongUs.

* LeadPoliceDetective: Jack Spratt

* TanksForTheMemories

** In ''The Fourth Bear'', Jack initiates his own race against the clock, giving himself 12 hours to solve the case. [[spoiler: 12 hours is the amount of time for the Secret service to find out he helped Bartholemew, their FallGuy escape capture. This is when the plot starts snowballing.]]

** The bears live at the Bob Southey.

* StealthPun: It's all about characters from nursery rhymes and mythology, crime-solving guided by knowledge of tropes and plot devices and the way nursery rhymes play out, set in the town of ''Reading'', (even if it is pronounced "Redding".)

* ThresholdGuardians: See NoFourthWall.

* BizarreAlienBiology: The Rambosians.

* FallGuy: Discussed and simultaneously [[DefiedTrope Defied]] and [[InvokedTrope invoked]] in ''The Fourth Bear'' by Jack with [[spoiler: Bartholemew. Jack realizes that MS-4, who are involved with the murders he is investigating, is setting up Bartholemew as the FallGuy and plays along by issuing a warrant of arrest in order buy time and to protect Bartholemew.]]

* LotsaPeopleTriedToDunIt: Nearly every suspect in the book actually tried to kill Humpty Dumpty, but didn't succeed. [[spoiler: His ex-wife thought she shot him, but actually killed his friend, Lord Spongg wired his car with a bomb but Humpty didn't drive it it, and Solomon Grundy hired a hit man who shot Humpty when he was already dying. The real killer? Humpty's crazy doctor who used him to incubate a monster, killing Humpty (who is literally a large egg) when it hatched.]]

* LotsaPeeoleTriedToDunIt: Nearly every suspect in the book actually tried to kill Humpty Dumpty, but didn't succeed. [[spoiler: His ex-wife thought she shot him, but actually killed his friend, Lord Spongg wired his car with a bomb but Humpty didn't drive it it, and Solomon Grundy hired a hit man who shot Humpty when he was already dying. The real killer? Humpty's crazy doctor who used him to incubate a monster, killing Humpty (who is literally a large egg) when it hatched.]]

* LotsaPepoleTriedToDunIt: Nearly every suspect in the book actually tried to kill Humpty Dumpty, but didn't succeed. [[spoiler: His ex-wife thought she shot him, but actually killed his friend, Lord Spongg wired his car with a bomb but Humpty didn't drive it it, and Solomon Grundy hired a hit man who shot Humpty when he was already dying. The real killer? Humpty's crazy doctor who used him to incubate a monster, killing Humpty (who is literally a large egg) when it hatched.]]

* LiteraryAllusionTitle: The title is a pun on Film/TheBigEasy

''Nursery Crime'' is a series of humorous [[UrbanFantasy fantasy]] / [[MysteryFiction 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 ''WesternAnimation/{{Shrek}}'' [[XMeetsY meets]] the PoliceProcedural.

Think of it as ''{{Shrek}}'' [[XMeetsY meets]] the PoliceProcedural.

* RaceAgainstTheClock: Happens several times, as fitting for any mystery/thriller.

* ShoutOut: At Castle Spongg, Lord Spongg mentions that the Norwegian Blue has "[[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus beautiful plumage]]". Among many, many more.