Bigby Wolf, formerly the Big Bad Wolf, is the Sheriff of Fabletown, a hidden community of fairytale

characters located in 1980s New York City. Receiving a call from Mr. Toad, Bigby protects a
prostitute from an intoxicated Woodsman. Before she departs, she tells him he is not as bad as
everyone says he is. Later that night, Bigby and Snow White find the woman's head left on the
Woodlands doorstep. Clues left with the head identify her as Faith, a Fable from Allerleirauh. Deputy
Mayor Ichabod Crane orders him and Snow to investigate her death. They head to the apartment
she shared with her husband Prince Lawrence and find the Tweedles, Dee and Dum, snooping
through it. Bigby pursues them, but they escape. He and Snow then learn that Lawrence and Faith
struggled to make ends meet and Faith took up prostitution to help pay the bills. Bigby leaves Snow
at the Woodlands while he continues to trace leads. When he returns, he finds the Woodlands
surrounded by police, Snow's head sitting on the building's steps.

Bigby is taken in for questioning by the mundy police, but Crane uses a spell to wipe the incident
from the police's minds. When they return, they are surprised to find Snow alive; the head, actually
that of a troll named Lily, was disguised by a black-market glamour. Bigby tracks Lily's connections to
the Pudding & Pie, a strip club run by Georgie Porgie, but Georgie claims innocence. Another
prostitute, Nerissa, cryptically directs Bigby to a nearby hotel room, where he finds Lily's blood and
photographic evidence of Crane engaging in sexual acts with Lily glamoured to look like Snow. After
informing Snow of this, they race back to the Woodlands to find Crane gone, and the Magic Mirror,
which could have revealed his location, shattered with one shard missing.

Bigby follows a trail of clues to Crane's whereabouts to the apartment of Aunty Greenleaf, a witch
that makes the black-market glamours. Along the way, he discovers that Crane has been embezzling
money from Fabletown over the years to pay off a loan shark known as the Crooked Man. Greenleaf
points Bigby and Snow back to the Pudding & Pie. Storming the club, they find Crane trying to
extract information out of the prostitutes to prove his innocence. Though Snow realizes Crane was
not the murderer, he is nonetheless arrested for embezzlement, but as they leave the club, the
Crooked Man and his henchmen, the Tweedles and Bloody Mary, confront them. Mary and the
Tweedles goad Bigby into his werewolf form, and a fight breaks out. When Mary critically wounds
Bigby with a silver bullet, Snow stops the fight and willingly gives up Crane to save Bigby's life.

Back at the Woodlands, Bigby struggles to find clues when Nerissa appears. He realizes the ribbon
she wears prevents her from speaking the truth, that Faith wore an identical ribbon, and that she
died when it was removed. He follows another trail of clues, and finds evidence of the black-market
glamour ring in the Cut Above butcher shop, a pawn shop called the Lucky Pawn owned by Jersey
Devil through which the Crooked Man distributes his loans, and Crane's presence, as well as the
missing Mirror Shard. The Mirror reveals Mary putting Crane onto an overseas flight to Paris to keep
him from talking, and the next location of the door to the Crooked Man's lair, which moves around
the city.

Bigby enters the Crooked Man's lair alone, meeting him and his agents. The Crooked Man reveals
Georgie as Faith and Lily's killer and claims he misunderstood his orders to deal with them, but
Georgie asserts the Crooked Man told him to kill the women. A fight ensues and the Crooked Man
and a fatally stabbed Georgie escape. When Bigby pursues the dying Georgie and his lover Vivian to
the Pudding & Pie, she explains that the Crooked Man and Georgie were trying to stop a plot
spearheaded by Faith with the other prostitutes to escape their forced servitude. Vivian is revealed
to be the original girl with a ribbon around her neck, and have made copies of it to trap other
women and force them to work for Georgie. Regretting her actions, Vivian undoes her ribbon,
severing her head and breaking the spell.

Bigby finds the Crooked Man hiding in an old foundry, and after turning into his true wolf form to kill
Bloody Mary, corners him in an office, where he demands a fair trial at the Woodlands. Bigby brings
the Crooked Man either dead or alive before the assembled Fables of Woodlands at the Business
Office, where he and Snow are forced to defend their actions against claims from the Fables. Bigby
recounts Vivian's and Georgie's confessions regarding the Crooked Man's involvement, but his word
is deemed untrustworthy. Nerissa appears and testifies that she and five other women heard the
Crooked Man order the murders. Their testimonies are considered sufficient to believe what Bigby
did was right. If the Crooked Man is alive, Bigby is allowed to choose his form of punishment: locking
him up forever, slice his neck open and kill him, or throwing him down the Witching Well (used to
dispose of dead Fables).

In the epilogue, Snow becomes the new Deputy Mayor and deals with the fallout of the Crooked
Man's actions, while Bigby sees off the Fables being taken back to the Farm. Nerissa approaches him
and admits that she, Faith and Lily concocted a plan to blackmail Georgie and the Crooked Man for
their freedom, using a picture of Lily and Crane together, but Georgie killed the two women when
she panicked and revealed their plot to him. Nerissa left Faith's head at the Woodlands to get Bigby
involved, and gave false testimony to have the Crooked Man punished, convinced that he was the
one who ordered their deaths but lacking the evidence to prove it. Leaving, she comments that
Bigby is not as bad as everyone says he is, causing Bigby to recall Faith's similar words to him and
question Nerissa's true identity hinting that Faith isn't really dead.