Sammy Keyes

We live in Santa Martina, remember? This town is full of wackos.
—Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen

, to quote The Other Wiki, is a series of mystery novels aimed at children and teenagers that, of course, follows the adventures of the titular protagonist. In most of the books, she deals with everyday junior high school life, solves mysteries, and contends with her arch-nemesis Heather Acosta, though there have been a couple of exceptions to the formula.

Tropes used in Sammy Keyes include:
  • Adult Fear: A lot happens in this series when Sammy investigates mysteries. It gets to the point that Grams asks Sammy to at least be upfront with her if she's doing anything involving gang territory, snooping or crime busting.
    • Sammy's mother abandons her to become a Hollywood actress, leaving her with Grams. While Sammy admits that Grams is a better guardian than Lady Lana ever was, she's worried about the fact that the apartment is seniors' only. As the Crocodile points out when blackmailing Sammy, if she makes a phone call busting her, Grams will be out on the street because there's a long waiting list of people who want her apartment. While Hudson generously offers his house to Grams and Sammy, Sammy doesn't want it to get to that point.
    • One story centers around Sammy running into a scared, desperate girl, who forces Sammy to take a bag. When the girl is forced to leave, it turns out that there's a baby inside. It's later revealed that the baby was the girl's son and that she was forced to give him to a complete stranger to protect him from her abusive ex-boyfriend, who was hunting her down. The climax of the novel reveals that the ex did catch her, and left her in his basement, tied up and starving. After she's rescued, she wants to see her baby before getting medical treatment.
    • Sammy's family and friends suffer this in Kiss Goodbye when Holly witnesses someone toss Sammy off the Senior Highrise fire escape and has to call 911. Holly is barely coherent when telling Officer Borsch what she saw, while Grams, in an OOC Is Serious Business moment, changes into the jeans and high tops that Sammy gifted her months ago to investigate. Officer Borsch admits to himself he is terrified and wonders why Sammy had to investigate on her own, especially when her friends compile a Long List of all the perps she's put away, and he questions how a teenager gains that many enemies.
  • An Aesop: Most of the books have at least one. Despite being Anvilicious at points, they're handled well.
  • Alliterative Name: Tenille Toolee, the Dragon to Heather's Big Bad.
  • Alpha Bitch: Heather, complete with a one-dimensional, dimwitted Girl Posse. The flatness of the characters could easily be explained by Sammy's biased perceptions of them.
  • Anger Born of Worry: In Moustache Mary, Officer Borsch yells at Sammy in the climax when she and her friends successfully bust a meth dealer using the Huntley land to run his lab. Not because she was a snooping kid as she assumes, but because she nearly got killed doing so. He's shaking her and telling her that drug dealers are very dangerous and you do not confront them directly.
  • Arch Enemy: Heather Acosta, to Sammy.
  • Author Appeal: Van Draanen's parents are Dutch immigrants, and so are Dot's. Her husband's great-grandfather crossed the plains in 1850. In Moustache Mary, the eponymous pioneer was part of a group of travelers doing the same thing, and Sammy spends New Years' with Dot's family. It's one of the few cases where the authour appeal is educational-as well as delicious.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The Sisters of Mercy, big time! Turns out they have a habit of robbing churches and framing the priest for embezzlement.
  • Camp Gay: Art gallery owner--and Ren Faire booth-runner--Jojo in Art of Deception.
  • Chekhov's Gun: As is natural for almost any detective story.
  • City of Adventure: Santa Martina.
  • Character Name and the Noun Phrase: The format all the titles follow.
  • Cool Old Guy: Hudson.
  • Cool Old Lady: Grams has her moments.
  • Cute Bruiser: And again, Sammy.
    • Holly Janquell, her baseball bat, and her troubled past would like to weigh in, too.
  • Darker and Edgier: How many kid detective series involve arson, murder, drugs, and sex, without any loss in quality?
  • Deadpan Snarker: A lot of characters in the series have shades of this, but it's most apparent in Sammy's narration.
  • Driving Question: Arguably - Sammy wants to know who her father is, and Van Draanen has stated that the series will end when she finds out.
    • More recently, Van Draanen said on her blog that Sammy will find out who he is with in the next few books, and the series will continue for several books after that.
  • Enemy Mine: Sammy and Officer Borsch help each other out occasionally. They eventually become Friendly Enemies, and then outright friends.
  • Eureka Moment: Again, as usual for the genre.
  • Evil Redhead: Heather, as well as her mother, though it's been suggested that they're dyeing it.
  • Fair Play Whodunit
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: Sammy (choleric), Marissa (sanguine), Holly (melancholic), Dot (phlegmatic).
  • He Is Not My Boyfriend: Sammy and Casey. No one believes her.
  • Hidden Depths: Many, many characters.
  • Inspector Javert: Officer Borsch, initially.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: Sammy and Hudson.
    • Sammy and Officer Borsch, eventually.
  • I Was Quite a Looker: Sammy finds an old picture of her neighbor, Mrs. Graybill.
  • Jerkass: Heather, all the way.
    • Danny Urbanski, as well.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Amazingly, Officer Borsch.
  • Kaleidoscope Eyes: Father Mayhew is mentioned to have them.
  • Kick the Dog: Heather's character is practically built upon petty maliciousness. Special mention goes to her taunting Sammy about losing her father's softball mitt in Sisters of Mercy.
  • Kid Detective: Sammy herself, sometimes with help from her friends. She calls it "snooping".
  • Masked Luchador: El Gato in Psycho Kitty Queen. He's actually Borsch, undercover on his own time to infiltrate a catfighting ring.
  • Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot:
    • In Psycho Kitty Queen, a spate of dead cats in dumpsters leads to Sammy and Holly uncovering a gambling ring where cats are forced to survive several rounds with attack dogs.
    • Kiss Goodbye has the inciting incident involving the Nightie Napper, a person in the Senior Highrise stealing women's nightgowns from the laundry room. Sammy investigating gave Larry Daniels, the perp from book one, an opportunity to push her off the fire escape.
  • The Nicknamer: Sammy, in regards to practically everything.
  • OOC Is Serious Business:
    • Sammy knows Hudson as a Cool Old Guy who rarely loses his temper and forgives her for accidentally trashing a bike she borrowed. He doesn't even need to find out the circumstances -- that a meth dealer destroyed it after Sammy and her friends used the bike to trap the dealer in his den-- but smiles and says they can rebuild it together. Art of Deception is the only time we see Hudson lose his temper, when an art professor featuring abstract oils is rude to him and Sammy after he asks to hear about her process.
    • Happens a lot in Kiss Goodbye:
      • Grams prefers her A-line dresses and pumps and will always try to make peace between Sammy and Lana despite Sammy having many reasons to be furious with her mother. This is the only book where we see Grams have an onscreen fight with Lana, calling out her daughter for being a selfish Drama Queen and blaming others for her own failings. Grams also puts on the jeans and high-tops that Sammy gifted her months ago so she can investigate on her granddaughter's behalf.
      • Office Borsch notes that usually he is a By-The-Book Cop that would ticket jaywalkers. He's shocked at himself when he starts bending the rules and acting like Sammy both to protect her and to find out who tried to kill her.
  • Out, Damned Spot!: Happens in Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway when Sammy accidentally kills one of Mrs. Amber's pet birds and hides the body out of guilt. Luckily, it ends better than a lot of examples.
  • Parental Abandonment:
    • Sammy's dad has vanished, and her mother has run off to Hollywood to be an actress. At least the case of Sammy's father, turns out it's because Lana being a teen mom didn't want to hunt him down after Darren Cole and the Troublemakers took off. Darren, on learning he has a daughter, is extremely apologetic towards both Sammy and Lana and strives to make up for lost time.
    • Casey certainly believes this is the case in The Wedding Crasher when his dad Warren gets a part in the same soap opera as Sammy's mom, thus forcing him to move in with his mother and sister, both of whom he hates. This causes some angst in his relationship with Sammy. It's also on the Squick side of things for the both of them when they find out that Warren and Lana are moving in together after having dated for a while.
  • Parents as People:
    • There is a reason why Sammy and Lana continue to have a rocky relationship through the series. Lana's dislike of blood is forgivable, as is her not liking when Dorito catches dead mice. Not-so-forgivable is abandoning her preteen daughter to go become an actress, leaving Sammy and Grams both at risk of becoming homeless because the highrise where Grams lives is Seniors Only. And she announced this on Sammy's birthday before forgetting the next year. While she does offer to come back to Santa Martina after Sammy saves her life, Sammy declines because she knows that her mom won't be happy, and it won't fix their relationship. And indeed, Grams finally does blow up at Lana for her irresponsibility in the last book when Lana tries blaming her for Sammy getting in a coma, when Grams points out that Lana hasn't been Sammy's mother.
  • Reality Ensues:
    • Sammy makes the decision to forgive her mother for abandoning her after Mrs. Graybill dies begging forgiveness from "Samantha" and thinking how the Crocodile never forgave her daughter for accidentally getting her dog killed when Tina was a child. That does not mean, however, that she necessarily forgets that Lady Lana is terrible at parenting. She especially is furious when Lana lets Dorito out of the apartment after he catches a mouse and freaks her out, then leaves without saying goodbye. Even Grams is annoyed after Dorito returns safe and sound but covered with fleas, muttering that Lana was irresponsible to not close the fire escape door in time.
    • This is how Heather gets her Karma Houdini Warranty as of The Search for Snake Eyes. When Casey proves that his sister framed Sammy and Marissa for vandalism, by delivering a wig and high-tops to Vice-Principal Caan, it's right when Santa Martina is playing in the softball championship. Sammy then realizes she has to give up the game to save Lena from Snake Eyes, after Snake Eyes kidnaps Bab briefly mistaking her for Sammy. Marissa comes to help, and Mrs. Rothammer refuses to play without the girls. Vice-Principal Caan has to forfeit the game, and this makes the whole school furious at Heather. She sabotaged her teammates and classmates for a chance to play, in a town where softball is Serious Business. While her mother gets her out of suspension-worthy punishment, she has to attend counseling and abide by a school-mandated probation that keeps her twenty-five feet from Sammy. It also means that people have No Sympathy when she, Monique and Tenille get injured mugging Sammy; everyone saw they ganged up on Sammy to grab her horsehoe, and were impressed that Sammy defended herself adequately.
    • By the time of Kiss Goodbye, Sammy has put away about a dozen crooks, exposed someone as a fraud, and uncovered two organized crime rings. While this is cool and badass, when her friends put together an entire list based on their adventures with her, Officer Borsch as the adult sees the problem: a teenager made a lot of enemies within a year. And it terrifies him, wondering just how much snooping Sammy did to uncover these crimes.
      • To a lesser extent, despite most of those criminals being arrested, Borsch notes that owing to sentences for smaller crimes like misdemeanors and good behavior while serving time, most of the criminals are already on parole. The ones who are still behind bars are mobsters, meaning they could have organized a hit. So that doesn't narrow down the suspects list, or erase the possibility of a Villain Team-up.
  • Retired Badass: One possible interpretation of Hudson. Kiss Goodbye confirms that he used to be a CIA agent.
  • Serious Business: Santa Martina takes softball very seriously, so much so that there's a softball statue in City Hall. It's rumoured that the mayor bows to it every day.
  • Shadow Archetype: Explicitly spelled out as Heather's relationship to Sammy, up to having the same birthday.
  • Street Urchin: Holly, initially.
  • Sympathy for the Devil: In Sammy Keyes and the Runaway Elf, Sammy spends time with Miss Graybill when the latter is spending time at a nursing home.
  • The Password Is Always Swordfish: When Sammy wants to figure out how to crack a safe, the advice Hudson gives her is essentially this trope, but paraphrased.
  • Together in Death: Really, really creepy variation in Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy. Sammy's mother Lana, an actress, fakes an ID so she can claim to be 25. Unfortunately, her new birthdate is the day her boss's wife died. He thinks Lana is the reincarnation of his wife, and he tries to kill both of them so they can be reincarnated together.
  • Villainous Breakdown: In the later books, this happens to Heather. She still hasn't really recovered from it. It doesn't help that Sammy saved her from drowning, either.
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: A possible interpretation of Heather Acosta. Neither of her parents seem to particularly care about her, with her mom apparently going through some kind of mid-life crisis and her dad wishing he had a restraining order against her.
  • Will They Or Won't They: Grams and Hudson have been dancing around this for several books now, with no evident conclusion.
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