The Great Brain

The Great Brain is a series of eight children's books written by John D. Fitzgerald. Taking place in the fictional town of Adenville, Utah, near the beginning of the 20th century, the books follow the various adventures of the middle Fitzgerald children.

Tom "TD" Fitzgerald, the titular "Great Brain", is an extremely smart child who balances his time between playing detective and coming up with various schemes to con the local kids out of their money and possessions. His brother John "JD" Fitzgerald narrates TD's various adventures and spends most of his time being the Butt Monkey of the series. Other major characters include TD and JD's older brother Sweyn; their adopted brother Franky; their parents; their adoptive Aunt Bertha; their Uncle Mark (who is the town marshal), and a couple of dozen or so neighborhood kids and their various family members.

Books in the series:

The Great Brain
More Adventures of the Great Brain
Me And My Little Brain (focuses on JD's life while Tom is away at Boarding School, introduces adopted brother Franky to the cast)
The Great Brain at the Academy
The Great Brain Reforms
The Return of the Great Brain
The Great Brain Does It Again
The Great Brain Is Back

Related books:

These books share the same setting and were published before the Great Brain books. The Great Brain series grew out of these novels, as a sequel series focusing on the children.

Papa Married a Mormon
Mama's Boarding House

Tropes used in The Great Brain include:

Adults Are Useless: Played straight most of the time. While the adults aren't completely incompetent, whenever something comes up it's usually up to Tom to set things right. Lampshaded in the very first book, when Tom actually gives a speech to a crowd of adults about how "when the adults failed, I knew it was up to me to succeed".
Author Avatar: JD is an obvious avatar of the series author John D. Fitzgerald.
Author Existence Failure: John D. Fitzgerald died after the 7th book was published; book 8 was finished using notes left behind by the author.
Batman Gambit: The Outlaw Cal Roberts pulls off a fairly good one in order to get at his intended targets. And of course, Tom pulls them off left and right.
Blackmail Is Such an Ugly Word: Happens at least once a book; JD insults Tom in some way, Tom manipulates JD into "punishing himself" by threatening to tell their parents.
Black Market: In book 4 Tom sets up a black market candy store inside the Academy, because the school has a strict "no candy on campus" rule, and he knows the desperate children will be more than willing to buy overpriced candy from him if they can get it.
Boarding School: The Academy in Salt Lake City that Tom and Sweyn attend.
Bumbling Dad: Mr. Fitzgerald is a mild case: though he is shown to be very intelligent and competent at most things, he's also portrayed as somewhat gullible and he can be careless when he gets caught up in an idea (such as when he gets the family lost in his zeal to find a new fishing hole on a camping trip).
Butt Monkey: JD, who ends up the target of Tom's schemes, blackmail, and general jerkassery more than anyone else.
Can't Get Away with Nuthin': JD, in contrast to Tom, rarely ever manages to successfully pull off his own schemes, and never manages to outsmart his brother.
Chain of Deals: JD attempts this in Book 3. He's pretty good at it until he gets to the end and realizes he never figured out what he wanted out of the deals.
Christianity Is Catholic: Averted, as the books are set in Utah. Though the Fitzgeralds are Catholic, the boys only see a priest once a year and never see a Catholic church until they go away to school.
Closer to Earth: Mrs. Fitzgerald fits this to a tee: she isn't as easily swayed as her husband in general or by Tom in particular, and she's always the first to take charge in a crisis. JD points out that "there's no disputing one of mamma's decisions".
Consummate Liar: Despite expressing an aversion to outright lying, Tom falls into this category, due to his tendency to manipulate the truth. And by the later books he just outright lies anyway.
Cowboys and Indians: The game of "Posse and Outlaw" the children play in book 6.
Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Tom is intelligent enough to make money without resorting to cheating and manipulation, and he does come up with a few legit business ventures over the series, but always ends up falling back on his con man ways.
A Day in the Limelight: JD is The Ishmael for most of the books except book 3, which is all about him.
Defeat Means Friendship: Sammy Leads picks on the Greek immigrant Basil until Basil manages to beat him in a fight. After that the two are as friendly with each other as they are with anyone else.
Demoted to Extra: Sweyn started out the series as a main character along with Tom and John, despite being put on a train in the second to last chapter of book 1. Except for Book 4, he plays an increasingly smaller part in the storyline as the books go on, as he spends most of his time away at school.
Devil in Plain Sight: Tom, although most people in town catch on pretty quickly that he's not to be underestimated.
Disproportionate Retribution: If you ever get on Tom's bad side, for any reason, be prepared to suffer extreme consequences. The worst may possibly be the very first book, in which Tom conspires to get his school teacher fired by framing him for drinking, all because the teacher paddled him.
Dumb Is Good: Completely averted. JD flat out says that it's not Tom's intelligence that makes him a Jerkass, but his "money loving heart".
Expy: Fitzgerald later wrote a book called Private Eye, set in the 1970s, with several similar characters: the Tom expy was more of a Kid Detective, but still had an admiring Ishmael brother, similar parents, and a bully/friend along the lines of Sammy Leeds.
Failure Is the Only Option: Every time Tom comes up with a legitimate business venture that doesn't involve cheating people (river rafting, a homemade chute-the-chute, a magic show, etc.) something eventually happens to put put an end to it.
Family Theme Naming: All of the Fitzgerald men have the middle name "Dennis".
Fate Worse Than Death: The "silent treatment", JD's family's ultimate punishment. For a period of time determined by the inflicter, you are treated as though you don't exist. It is presented as being utterly crushing.
Faux Action Girl: Britches Dotty. She's introduced in book 2 as a tomboy capable of holding her own against the boys in most things, and manages to beat up the biggest bully in school in a fair fight. By the end of her chapter though, she's been transformed into a normal girl and gives up "masculine" pursuits. Considering where and when this happened, it was inevitable.
First Name Ultimatum: The main characters' parents normally call them by just their initials. Anytime a parent calls a child by his full first and middle name, he knows he's in trouble.
Good Is Boring: This is JD's opinion, after Tom reforms.
Heroic Sociopath: A mild example with TD. Tom is greedy, manipulative, and more than willing to con people out of their money or posessions, and even when he does something truly heroic, there's usually a selfish reason behind his actions.
Hypocrite: Tom. He expresses a dislike for lying and espouses the virtues of honor and keeping your word... but he lies quit a bit to further his own needs, and blackmail is one of his favorite punishments for his brother.
It Will Never Catch On:
- The very first chapter of the first book has Mr. Fitzgerald purchase Adenville's very first "Water Closet" (AKA an indoor toilet). This is the reaction of most of the town.
- The bishop in book 4 says there never has been an athletic program at a Catholic school and there never will be.
Interrupted Suicide: Tom walks in on JD helping Andy commit suicide and puts a stop to it.
Insane Troll Logic: Tom's "explanation" to the other kids at the academy as to why his Black Market candy store is perfectly acceptable within the rules of the school borders on this; his logic doesn't hold up to any serious scrutiny, but the kids he's trying to convince accept it pretty fast. Many of Tom's other explanations for his schemes fall into this category too.
From a Certain Point of View: Tom is actually against outright lying, but has no problem at all using this trope to cover his tracks.
Jerkass: Tom, quit a bit of the time, especially as the books went on.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Also Tom, when he's doing something a little more heroic.
Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: The local kids put up with Tom's schemes... until he risks the lives of a whole raft full of them just to earn some money.
Karma Houdini: Somewhat subverted; Tom actually gets in trouble quite a lot for the various stunts he pulls, to the point where he probably loses his allowance more weeks out of the year than he gets it. But on the other hand, the punishments he receives for his plans are often pretty light relative to what he actually does; such as when he tried to get his teacher fired by ruining his reputation; the punishment? a week of silent treatment.
- JD confirms Tom's Houdini status in-universe, when he points out that many townspeople have tried to have him arrested for his stunts, but are never able to because he never does anything technically illegal.
Kid Detective: Tom, half the time
Literary Agent Hypothesis: In Book 4, JD tells the reader that the stories of the academy that he's narrating are pieced together from the sometimes contradictory secondhand accounts given to him by his brothers Tom and Sweyn and the letters they wrote home during their time away at school.
Manipulative Bastard: Tom
Mobile Kiosk: Abie Glassman
My God, What Have I Done?: The whole town goes through this when Abie Glassman dies from malnutrition and everyone begins to question if they're possibly Anti-Semitic and how differently things might have turned out if it had happened to someone else. As a result, guilt ran rampant throughout the town for a while.
Parental Obliviousness: Most notably in Book 5 when Papa and Mama don't realize until after the flood that Tom has been charging kids for rides on the raft, even though Papa had inspected it and been aware that Tom was making several trips a day and using one of his horses to haul it. Averted in other parts, where they suspect that the boys are up to something but elect to let them sort it out amongst themselves.
Peeling Potatoes: One of the standardized punishments handed out at the Academy.
Put on a Bus: Or rather a train; Sweyn is sent away to boarding school.
Retcon: Book 1 ends with Tom learning a lesson about good deeds being their own reward and reforming from his con man ways. Book 2 retcons this change of heart into a ruse used by Tom to fool their parents into buying him a new bicycle.
Rhymes on a Dime: Herbie the Poet, introduced in book 7, rhymes all his sentences. He soon admits he does this because, being severely overweight, he's not athletic enough to do much else.
Sadist Teacher:
- Subverted; when the new teacher Mr. Standish is introduced, he's seen by the children as an unmerciful tyrant willing to paddle children for the slightest offense. However, it soon becomes clear to the heroes and the reader that he's actually a very dedicated upstanding man, and they actually come to respect him.
- Subverted again with the entirety of book 4; Tom expects life at the academy to be miserable, as he's heard various horror stories of how strict everything is. By the end of the book he admits that, while the school did turn out to be very strict, he ended up respecting the teachers and their dedication to the students.
Scooby-Doo Hoax: Book 2 has the characters investigating a haunted mining town, where they run into a ghost. The ghost turns out to be the uncle of one of the neighborhood kids, who overheard them planning and dressed up as a ghost to scare the kids away.
- Tom also perpetuates a Scooby-Doo Hoax against the entire town when he creates fake monster footprints near a cave. He only did it to teach a kid a lesson about bragging but the whole town ends up falling for it.
- He also has J.D. dress as a devil to scare Herbie Sties into sticking to his diet. It works a little too well, and he refuses to eat for days. Tom confesses after hearing his parents called the doctor, but still thinks Mr Sties owes him money for the weight Herbie lost.
Second Place Is for Winners: The spelling bee in the last book.
Shut UP, Hannibal: JD puts Tom on trial in book 5, and he only goes along with it because he's convinced he'll make fools out of them all. Harold proceeds to tear his logic and defense to pieces.
- Father O'Malley does it in book 4, when he hears Tom's confession for the first time. Tom makes an excuse for every sin he confesses, and Fr. O'Malley tells him his confession has been blasphemous and gives him a huge penance.
Too Dumb to Live: You start to wonder pretty quickly why anyone would make a bet with Tom, considering that he always wins. And yet the kids keep doing it.
Uncancelled: It's obvious from reading the first book in the series that the author intended to write only one book. The seventh book also seemed to be written as an end to the series, but the eighth, which was published after Fitzgerald's death, starts right where the seventh left off.
We Want Our Jerk Back: After Tom reforms, JD secretly wishes for him to return to his former ways, because the reformed Tom is boring.
Wham! Episode: Every book tends to have at least one chapter that's much more serious than all the rest, usually involving someone getting hurt or dying, and the characters learning some sort of Aesop about it. The hardest hitting one is probably the chapter in Book 1 when Abie Glassman dies.
The Woobie: Franky is an in-universe example, as his tragic backstory gains him loads of sympathy from nearly everyone and leads the Fitzgeralds to adopt him.
Zany Scheme: Half the various plots of the series revolve around Tom pulling off one of these, usually for the purpose of taking someone's stuff or teaching them a lesson.