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Detective Patsy: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
The perp hires a detective to solve the crime, in order to throw suspicion off himself. Typically, the detective in question is a [[Defective Detective]], to minimize the odds of him actually working it out.
Invariably, the detective turns out to be not ''quite'' so defective as the perp thought, and figures it all out.
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* [[Nero Wolfe]] once required a client to sign a statement promising to pay in full, even if he turned out to be the guilty one. It turned out to be a good precaution.
* Writer Ross Macdonald's characters, particularly Lew Archer, were picked so often for plots like this, it's hardly any wonder that they always demanded payment in advance.
* [[Ur Example]] is probably the Sherlock Holmes story ''The Adventure of the Retired Colourman''. A quote from the end of the story:
{{quote|"You certainly seem to have met every difficulty," said the inspector. "Of course, he was bound to call us in, but why he should have gone to you I can't understand."
"Pure swank!" Holmes answered. "He felt so clever and so sure of himself that he imagined no one could touch him. He could say to any suspicious neighbour, 'Look at the steps I have taken. I have consulted not only the police but even Sherlock Holmes.'" }}
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'''Girlfriend (to gigolo boyfriend)''': I wanted to see that movie, but you said no! }}
* A weird one in ''[[Murder, She Wrote]]'': The murderer is a DA, who killed one of the defendants in a major fraud case. Earlier, he tried to phone her and accidentally called Jessica's number. To cover this up, the DA subpeonas Jessica and refuses to believe she has no idea what it's about. So Jessica has to solve the murder to avoid being found in contempt of court.
* In ''[[Sledge Hammer!]]'': the episode "Play It Again, Sledge" has a women hire Sledge as private investigator, to make him an eyewitness of her "selfe-defence" murder.
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== Anime and Manga ==
* In {{spoiler|''[[All There in the Manual|StrikerS Sound Stage X]]''}} of ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'', {{spoiler|Teana}} found herself in this role, as she eventually found out that the perp who was behind the killings of the case she was investigating was {{spoiler|Runessa, her assistant who had been part of the case since day one and who regarded the [[Hoist by His Own Petard|already dead]] [[Right-Wing Militia Fanatic|fanatic Toredia]] as a mentor and father figure}}.
* In [[Detective Conan]], a case that had both Conan and Heiji working together in Osaka had {{spoiler|the detective who was helping them and Kogoro to catch a serial killer... as the killer himself. The victims were the people who caused the death of his father, 25 years ago; he specifically [[Xanatos Gambit|became a policeman to find them, make them spit the truth out, and then kill them in a way that would both baffle the whole Osaka police corps ''and'' let him blame someone else for it]].}}
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[[Category:Cops and Detectives]]
[[Category:Crime and Punishment Tropes]]
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