Sammy Keyes/YMMV
- Alas, Poor Villain: Mrs. Graybill, as well as Heather crying over losing a softball game. How messed up is this girl? Even Sammy feels sorry for her.
- Alternative Character Interpretation: Again Heather. Is she really just a spiteful, manipulative brat or is she an emotionally damaged girl desperate for the attention and approval of her family and peers. Sammy can't seem to figure her out.
- Sammy can be viewed as either a plucky amateur sleuth, or a nosy girl who causes trouble for all her friends.
- Crowning Moment of Awesome: At least one per book, such as the bit in Psycho Kitty Queen where Heather and her pals try to steal Sammy's horseshoe, and she beats them all up and breaks Heather's arm.
- Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: At least one per book, such as the bit in Runaway Elf where Sammy helps Elysa move past the death of her father.
- Draco in Leather Pants: Heather seems to have shades of this for most fans, especially in later books.
- Growing the Beard: The series was good to begin with, but as time has gone on, the books have combined episodic mystery with arc-based character drama, thoroughly averting Status Quo Is God.
- High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy. And in Dead Giveaway, it turns out that the abusive husband has been dead for a while, and his wife has been posing as him and hiding his body in her compost pile.
- Stoic Woobie: Good Lord, Holly. Her parents are dead, she's lived in eight abusive foster homes, and when Sammy finds her, she's living in a cardboard refrigerator box down by the river.
- Toy Ship: Sammy/Casey. Marissa/Danny is not a Beta Couple, since they have roughly the same amount of trouble getting together.
- True Art Is Incomprehensible: Mocked thoroughly in Art of Deception.