Literature / The Bright Falls Mysteries

The Bright Falls Mysteries is Dark Fantasy Urban Fantasy series by C.T. Phipps and Michael Suttkus which takes place in The United States of Monsters where supernaturals came out in the 2008 Bailout. It is an Affectionate Parody of the genre, verging on horror comedy, where everyone is a smartass familiar with monster tropes and movies, but serious crimes occur.

Generally, the books all take place in Michigan in a fictional small town called Bright Falls. Jane Doe is a weredeer waitress working for her parents at the Deerlightful Diner. Possessed of the ability to read objects, she uses this power to solve murders and supernatural crimes in her hometown.

The books in the series so far are:

• I Was A Teenage Weredeer (2017)
• An American Weredeer in Michigan (2017)
• A Nightmare on Elk Street (2021)

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Series

• The Alleged Car: Combined with Cool Car in the fact Jane owns a 2001 green Hummer which belonged to her grandfather and is apparently both indestructible as well as constantly breaking down. It also gets about a mile to the gallon. She's nicknamed it "The Millennium Falcon."
• All The Other Weredeer: Jane is a petite awkward snarky young woman in a race which is notable for its superhumanly gorgeous women. Mostly played for laughs.
• Ambiguous Situation: The exact circumstances behind Jillian's death when Jane was a child. Jane isn't sure if Jill simply drowned from a freak accident or if the kelpie killed her; the kelpie takes credit for it, but Jane doesn't remember it being there that day and only discovered it after gaining enough magic power to theoretically create it herself. To further complicate things, Jacob states that the kelpie was lying because spirits can lie, except Jacob is a spirit too and could be lying himself. The fact that Jane doesn't know what really happened is the most upsetting part of the already bad memory.
• Animorphism: Comes with being a series about a weredeer. In this case, Jane doesn't physically transform into a deer but one minute is a human then the next minute is a deer. She's not sure how it works either and speculates on everything from alternate realities to reality being an illusion.
• Bambification: Played with. While stags are shown to be dangerous and deer are the "mystics" of the shapechanger race, Jane herself is a small and adorable human being with a similar look in her deer form. She does, however, headbutt people and trample them in her "bambi" form, though.
• Betty and Veronica: Jane has this relationship between FBI Agent Alexander Timmons (The Betty) and local crime lord Lucien Lyons (The Veronica). Jane generally leans towards Alex but still has an attraction to the latter.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Jane and Alex both embody Good Is Not Nice as they pretty much tear through a variety of nasty beasties with little care to the brutality in the process. Otherwise, they're quirky and fun geeks.
• Crapsaccharine World: Bright Falls, Michigan is a picturesque logging town which is full of Quirky Townspeople. It's also a place which is riddled with crime, hostile spirits, and a good quarter of its population being shapechangers. This is in addition to the fact the setting is an Unmasqued World with the possibility of the government trying to kill all supernaturals just a stone's throw away while many supernaturals are genuinely evil but the government doesn't discriminate from normal ones (or who fight evil ones).
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: Combined with an Interfaith Smoothie and you get the religion of shapechangers in Bright Falls, MI. They worship a combination of Celtic deities, the Abrahmic God, and Native American spirits. Given All Myths Are True, this is a perfectly valid religion and works for them.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: "Varmint Laws" allow anyone who feels threatened by a shapechanger to shoot at them. As such, most shapechangers keep their identities hidden or live in one of the five states where they don't exist.
• Eldritch Location: Bright Falls, Michigan is a place where the Spirit World and physical world's barriers are extremely weak.
• Fantastic Noir: The series is inspired by the works of David Lynch despite being set in a town full of werewolves and spirits. Jane Doe is an amateur detective in a town utterly filled with secrets, lies, and real world evils alongside the supernatural ones.
• Hated Hometown: Jane Doe is a weredeer teenage girl who wants to get out of her hometown and go onto bigger as well as better things. Each book results in her taking on more responsibility like being the town shaman and taking over her parents diner. She finally makes it out in the end of the third book and gets a job doing movie security.
• Physical God: An issue in Bright Falls due to the location being incredibly close to the Spirit World. The Big Bad Wolf, Earthmother, and Boogeyman all qualify.
• Series Continuity Error: The first two books can't decide if Jane's cousin is named Jenny or Jillian and refers to her as both names relatively equally. The third book eventually settles on Jenny. This was corrected in later editions of the book.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: They come in all varieties of animals and are related to vampires.

I Was a Teenage Weredeer

• Abusive Parents:
  • More like abusive grandparents, but Marcus O'Henry abuses both of his granddaughters freely, with Emma saying that her shifting meant that he didn't have to try to hide the bruises anymore. He also hospitalized Clara at one point.
  • Alex and Lucien's father was also abusive to his son, especially mentally, convincing Alex that he was the evil one who deserved his father's wrath rather than an innocent victim.
• Alas, Poor Villain: The kelpie monster was only following its nature rather than having any actual malicious intent, and by the time Jane is done psychically showing it what all of its victims felt, it outright begs to be killed. Jane notes later that she doesn't even feel satisfied over its death, just pity.
• Alpha Bitch: A literal example given Victoria O'Henry is a Mean Girl as well as werewolf. Except not as she turns out to have been possessed during this time.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Emma attempts one to Jane who more or less ignores it due to the fact she doesn't want to endanger their friendship.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Downplayed with Victoria; while she was not a good person in life and Jane doesn't mourn her passing at all, it doesn't mean that she deserved to die and Emma still mourns her deeply.
  • Thomas, on the other hand, was a lowlife drug dealer who tried to make Victoria have sex with him to clear her debt. As a result, he goes unmourned when Jane realizes Victoria killed him.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Jane mentions that Jared Padalecki came out as a werebear during the run of Supernatural.
• Big Bad: The Big Bad Wolf a.k.a The Red Wolf.
• Broken Pedestal: Jane has this toward her mother when she finds out she's not only an adulterer but a woman who did black magic for the O'Henry family.
• Coming-Out Story: Parodied with Emma O'Henry who isn't aware Jane has known she was a lesbian since junior high.
• Cowboy Cop: FBI Agent Timmons, as a believer in the powers of the shifters, doesn't even try to pretend that he's not blatantly breaking the law in pursuit of Victoria's killer, recruiting Jane on the case pretty much immediately just because her mother suggested it.
  Jane: Wait, you want an eighteen-year-old random stranger to interfere in your investigation?
  Alex: Absolutely.
• Creepy Mortician: Gerald Pasteur, the town coroner, is a vampire who likes to sleep in one of his drawers during the day. Jane immediately assumes he might have killed Victoria, then realizes she's being incredibly racist and that he was actually a victim of Victoria's instead of the other way around.
• Cycle of Revenge: The Red Wolf has cursed the town for killing his family, only to have others come after it, and plans for revenge from his followers. Similarly, Lucien Drake wants to avenge the Drake family, which was killed by the O'Henry family for their past enemies.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Part of the reason why Jane launches head first into the case is because she accidentally caused her cousin to drown when they were ten, then lied about it to protect herself.
  • Alex grew up with a horrifically abusive father, accidentally killed his sister when he finally willed for said father to die, then watched his adoptive brother spiral down a path of vengeance and crime.
• Deader than Dead: Victoria had her soul sucked out of her as part of a ritual sacrifice, meaning her body is nothing more than an empty husk.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Jane defeats the Big Bad Wolf, who is a local nature god and able to warp reality around himself.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Maria is more than happy to flee for her life when the group finds Alex's phone dropped at the Lodge. It takes a reminder that her brother is missing too for her to finally decide to go on.
  • The Red Wolf's vision reveals that Marcus was perfectly confident leading an angry mob against what he believes to be a helpless family, but once they were killed and the Red Wolf unleashed his power, Marcus turned tail and fled, leaving the mob he formed to be massacred.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The Big Bad Wolf cursed the entire town of Bright Falls for the death of his children with a mortal woman. Decades ago, they had formed a mob to go after them due to his being a Native American in his avatar and his lover being a respected white woman. The children were accidentally killed during the confrontation only for the Red Wolf to kill the majority of the mob. The Red Wolf goes, Freddy Krueger style, after the survivor's children.
• Dissonant Serenity: Alex reacts to the fact that he and Jane have accidentally stumbled into Hell itself with a startling sense of calm. When the facade starts to crack, Jane realizes just how dangerous the situation actually is.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The coven letting the Big Bad Wolf possess them is played a lot like a group trying recreational drugs; it's described as a rush that makes people feel invincible and two of them become addicted to the feeling.
• Eldritch Location: The forest which contains the Lodge is outright stated to be an evil location, featuring spirits that bring out one's worst memories and monsters which seek to torment those who enter.
• Everyone Has Standards: As fine as they were trying to have a demon possess them for the high, Jeremy and Maria both backed out the moment that human sacrifice came into it.
• Evil Is Petty: In the past, when the O'Henry's clashed with vampires over the land and called in arbitrators, Marcus became angry when they sided with the vampires and murdered one in retaliation. In reality, this is only to cover up his role in the crusade of the Red Wolf and his murder of the Drake clan.
• Expy: Victoria O'Henry is a werewolf version of Laura Palmer.
• Face–Heel Turn: The Red Wolf was once a benevolent nature spirit before becoming a demon.
• Fantastic Racism: Marcus O'Henry's defining trait is his racism towards anyone not a werewolf, especially wizards, vampires, and humans.
• God Test: Gerald the coroner is alright with Jane reading Victoria's body if she reads him first to prove her psychic abilities. She reads him and recites just enough of his backstory to convince him that she's legit.
• Heel–Face Turn: Judy Doe abandoned black magic after murdering most of the Drake family but refusing to kill their youngest son.
• Human Sacrifice: What was done to the victims using an enchanted blade.
• Hypocrite: Marcus dispises vampires with a passion, yet had Victoria bring him vampire blood to make him stronger so he could hold on to power.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Discussed; Jane notes that she never understood why Batman didn't just kill the Joker in spite of this logic, saying that killing a murderer is not the same as killing innocent people. Alex immediately calls her on this, asking her if she still thinks it's that simple following her encounter with the kelpie.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Alex learned how to perform martial arts from an avatar of the Third Doctor as well as by studying Bruce Lee's works.
• Implausible Deniability: Alex is well aware that Jeremy didn't kill Victoria from the moment he begins working on the case, but he only knows because he found it out while astral projecting, which is impossible to back up in a court of law. This is why he recruits Jane to the case: he knows she not only can help him figure out the secret, but that she wants to more than anyone else.
• Incompatible Orientation: Averted. Jane admits to being bisexual but has other reasons for not getting with her best friend.
• Love Potion: It's revealed that Victoria drugged Gerald the coroner with a love potion in order to make him susceptible to her suggestions. Gerald is heavily traumatized by this, with Jane outright referring to the act as rape.
• Mundane Solution: The Lodge can mystically move its location, meaning that searching for it is near impossible; to counter this, Alex simply pings Clara's cellphone and tracks that instead of trying to find the Lodge itself.
• Mundane Utility: Alex uses his mystical powers as a shaman to summon umbrellas for everyone when it starts to rain. Maria later conjures a flashlight in much the same way.
• Noble Demon: Lucien Drake is a drug lord who's willing to let teens work for him, but when the chips are down, he's not a bad person and is more than willing to help his brother Alex and Jane solve the case.
• Revenge Before Reason: One of the bigger themes of the novel. Averted with Lucien who abandons his plan for revenge because of his love for Jane.
• Shout-Out:
  • Jane refers to Alex as Agent Cooper; Emma doesn't get the reference and corrects her.
  • After Jane and Alex escape from the Hell-like reality wrinkle, Jane criticizes Lucien for his club becoming a Hellmouth.
• Willing Channeler: The Red Wolf coven channeled the Red Wolf for power, rewards, as well as the ectasy of the experience.
• Wrongfully Accused: Jeremy Doe is the primary suspect for Victoria's murder. He's not guilty but he's a lot more involved than Jane assumed.

An American Weredeer in Michigan

• Big Bad: John Winston Jones is the leader of the Ultralogists.
• Broken Pedestal: Jane has this reaction to the Goddess of the Forest due to the discovery she was leaving her children to die.
  • Robyn has this reaction to her father who was one of the Goddess of the Forest's cultists.
• Church of Happyology: The Ultralogists are a thinly disguised version of Scientology, only they have magic.
• Composite Character: John Winston Jones is a combination of L. Ron Hubbard and Timothy Leary.
• Death of a Child: The depiction of a pit full of seeming child sacrifices is the start of the story. The actuality, that they're the abandoned offspring of the local forest goddess she expected her cult to care for, isn't much better.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Jones' plan to control the Goddess of the Forest wouldn't work. It would end in a Biblical judgement of Bright Falls.
• Grand Theft Me: John Winston Jones can do this as a way to survive, possessing the bodies of his descendants.
• Hunter of Monsters: Larry and Yolanda's profession both before and after The Reveal.
  • Lucien and Alex used to be this despite being supernaturals themselves.
• Jerkass Gods: This proves to be the case for the Goddess of the Forest, who is an avatar herself for Gaia.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Robyn Taylor is half-human, half forest goddess.
• The Man Behind the Man: Marcus O'Henry proves to be responsible for Alice destroying the forest, the griffon going after Alice, the selling of the Deerlightful, Alex being framed for Jones' death, and Lucien almost being assassinated.
• Oblivious to Love: Jane "dated" Lucien for a few weeks without realizing it.
• Plant Person: Robyn possesses the power to command plants and make them grow.
• Rage Against the Heavens: Jane has a minor one of these when she finds out the embodiment of nature she worships as a god is callous and apatheic.
• Relationship Upgrade: Jane has one of these with Alex. It's averted with Lucien, who she had one with offscreen, only to break up with him immediately afterward.
• Self-Made Orphan: The discovery Alex killed his father to protect his sister. Subverted as it turns out his father survived.
• Shout-Out: Jane's vision of the apocalyptic future Jones would create with his actions is explicitly called a Dead Zone moment.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Larry and Yolanda are annoyed (rather than horrified) to find out many supernaturals are decent ordinary people when they've been indiscriminately hunting them.

A Nightmare on Elk Street

• Aborted Arc: By the time the book begins, the Red Sky ninja clan is almost wiped out.
• Above the Influence: Lucien turns out to have been under a love spell by Preacher but it barely piqued his interest because he was in love with Jane the entire time.
• Abusive Parents: Phillip Tzu regularly tortured both his children in order to make them more powerful wizards. It also made them hate him.
• Affably Evil: Phillip Tzu is a pleasant man who sincerely wants the best for the world and humanity. He also cheerfully indulges Jane's pop culture insults like comparing him to Barty Crouch and Freddy Krueger. He's also child-abusing mass murdering scum.
• Always Someone Better: Jane feels this way about her cousin, Jesse, who is basically her but cooler.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Phillip Tzu is dead at the start of this and so is Samantha but there is a plot to resurrect them.
  • Jesse Stagg is killed but comes back almost immediately due to the fact that she's part vampire as well as shifter. It ruins her chance to be Shaman, though.
  • William England has this as one of his powers.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Samantha and Phillip share the status of Big Bad. In the end, Phillip defeats his daughter and is defeated himself by the group. Ironically, Samantha lends a bit of dying help against Phillip.
• Blonde Republican Sex Kitten: Christine pretends to be The Fundamentalist while actually being a dedicated social climber.
• Broken Pedestal: Jane's opinion of Kim Su is broken when she learns that she was sabotaging her training. Before, Jane could accept that Kim didn't want to train her, but to actively train her wrong is an entirely different thing.
• Cain and Abel: Jane and Jesse have a knife fight when they think the other is the murderer. It's actually their sister, Janet, who is the Cain.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After three books of struggling, horrifying revelations, deaths in the family, and a slide down the moral code, Jane finally gets her happy ending, retiring as Shaman to move to New Detroit with Lucien and leaving her old life behind, content knowing that her sister can do the job in her place and the O'Henry's are defeated forever.
• Everyone Is Related: In a bit of a Continuity Nod, Jane is told by her father that his grandmother was actually a vampire and the family bloodline is secretly Dhampyr. From his description, it's fairly clear that their ancestor is Ashura from Straight Outta Fangton.
• Evil Is Petty: The villain steals Jane's CD collection. It is actually a clue that the Big Bad is someone Jane's age and motivated by sibling-like jealousy turned up to eleven.
• Face–Heel Turn:
  • In Teenage Weredeer, Alice O'Henry was certainly no saint but she was at least capable of showing kindness when necessary and seemed to be looking out for her family. Here, she's thrown all of these qualities away and is fully willing to sacrifice the entire city to the Boogeyman and the Vampire Nation just for the sake of getting more money.
  • Preacher is revealed to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing as she planned to be with Lucien only to get herself closer to leading a united shifter race.
• White-Collar Crime: Lucien has entered the B-movie film industry as part of a plan to launder half a billion dollars for the Vampire Nation. It actually proves lucrative in its own right.
• Gambit Pileup: The book is a giant pile of people all trying to resurrect Phillip Tzu for their own ends:
  • Alice and Preacher want to earn favor with Red Sky for the sake of their own power.
  • Samantha wants to raise him so she can kill him permanently and begin an apocalypse, while Janet wants to kill her family out of jealousy.
  • Phillip himself wants to escape so that he can enact his own vision of a perfect world, one where supernaturals reign supreme over the humans.
• Grand Finale: Jane decides to leave Bright Falls with Lucien and live in Detroit. She gives up the mantle of Shaman to her sister and decides to forge her own path. It helps that her mother is still alive, the power of the O'Henry family is broken, and the curse on the town is lifted.
• Grand Theft Me:
  • Janet Stagg has been possessed by Samnatha Timmons the entire story.
  • So has Alex, who has been fused with the spirit of the Boogeyman.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Averted. It's explained twice, for humor, that ninjas aren't actually magical super-martial artists but trained infiltrators. Both Alice and Preacher turn out to be members of the Red Sky group.
• Hypocritical Humor: Just about everything with Christine, who claims to The Fundamentalist but engages in sex with vampires as well as acting in an exploitation film for her own burgeoning film career.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Averted but just barely. Emma offers Jane some deer jerkey she bought at a gas station.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Jane's dad has numerous ones, including revealing that he had a Nirvana tribute band called "Heart Shaped Bucks."
• Killed Off for Real: Alice O'Henry and Preacher. They were secretly agents of the Red Sky the entire time.
• Lowest Common Denominator: In-universe. The Growling reboot will be marketed on sex, blood, and using real shifters. It works fantastically well as it's released during quarantine and becomes a huge success.
• More than Mind Control: Janet Stagg is stated to be someone who was controlled by Samantha Timmons not just through mind control but also her anger and resentment at her siblings. Also, her jealousy of their shifter status.
• Most Common Superpower: Jane laments that Jesse looks almost identical to her but taller and more, well, robust.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It's noted that Jane's killing of Marcus O'Henry has extremely negative consequences for the world at large - his trial was meant to prove to humanity that supernaturals could be held to human laws, and Jane subverting all of that sends human-supernatural relations right back to where they started.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Phillip's children are both extremely powerful and unstable wizards due to his abuse. They also hate him. He's finally sent to Hell in the end. Literally.
• Not Blood Siblings: A quirk of shifter culture is that those who "breed true" are expected to have children with other shifters or their non-shifter relatives. Thus Jane's maternal cousins are actually her half-sisters. This gets mocked by the villain.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Alex and Lucien hunting down the entirety of the Red Sky organization to protect Jane.
• Our Slashers Are Different:
  • Despite actual slashers being a thing in the United States Of Monsters books, the slasher in this book is actually an indestructible spirit. It is the Boogeyman, the King of the Boggarts, and a literal god of fear invoking a movie slasher from the script they're working from. He's also possessing Alex.
  • William England from Psycho Killers in Love also shows up in the book as a bodyguard for the actresses. Jane is off put by his Resurrective Immortality and Sociopathic Hero tendencies.
• Redemption Equals Death: Samantha and Janet use their dying act to send Jane, Alex, Lucien, and Phillip to the surface, essentially passing the battle to the whole group that might have a shot at taking him down rather than just the three. Jane notes that even if it doesn't necessarily make up for what they did, it's at least something.
• Resurrective Immortality: Jane is surprised to find out this is a thing with both Phillip Tzu, his daughter Samantha, and the slasher William England.
• Slasher Movie: Essentially the novel's entire premise is Jane is being stalked by a supernatural Implacable Man with a giant pair of shears while attempting to film a slasher movie. Jane notes that the person behind this has a very sick sense of humor. It's because it's a possessed teenage girl.
• Straw Hypocrite: Christine is a Blonde Republican Sex Kitten and Fantastic Racism bigot who doesn't mind sleeping with supernaturals to get ahead in acting.
• Stylistic Suck: Lucien's movie is apparently every bad cliche of horror movies ever made. It just stars actual monsters.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Alex's gallivanting across the country to fight evil and secrecy results in Jane deciding he's a terrible boyfriend and breaking up with him.