Created by John Weagly
“… the Heart O’ Chicago motel… was the perfect spot for a not-quite romantic rendezvous or if you wanted a seedy place to try heroin for the first time.”
— Casper sets a mood in “Ferocious Infidelity”
CASPER BARNETT is a P. I. in Chicago whose stories, the author admits, he likes to keep “a little bit offbeat, so there’s a touch of humor and even absurdity at times.”
And he ain’t lying. He kicks off the series in fine form with “A Toe For Jesus” (2024, Punk Noir), which finds the Casper hired to retrieve the toe of his client, a young Christian who in her wilder days, allowed her then-boyfriend to lop it off. Cocaine may have been involved.
The story reveals the bottom-feeder gumshoe to be quite the operator; a corner-cutting opportunist not overly concerned with scruples, a thug who specializes in “bad marriage” cases, and occasionally applies pressure to people that need a reminder on “how to be civil.” He’s also occasionally mean-spirited.
So Casper’s no charmer. He notes that he “hadn’t been on a date since the Cubs won the World Series.”
No wonder.
But the stories are short and sharp jabs, little twisted cynical nuggets of a world where lies pile up, and the end comes on like a slap in the face. Or a punch in the arm.
You’ll either love ’em or hate them. Me? I thought they were a hoot.
Bet you can’t read just one.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In the early 1990’s, Chicago’s John Weagly toured the US as a writer/performer with Authorized Personnel: A Comedy and Improv Team, and since then, he’s had over 100 scripts receive over 200 productions by theaters around the world. As a fiction writer, he’s been nominated for the Derringer Award 7 times, winning one in 2008, and has been nominated for a Spinetingler Award. He has another series character, Buster Bash, a former professional wrestler who runs a small town diner, and gets roped into various crime-related situations. The Chicago Sun-Times has called Weagly’s work “exuberant,” while the Chicago Tribune ranks it as “charming” and the Chicago Reader rates it “appealingly quirky.” You can find more of his short stories in the collections The Undertow of Small Town Dreams and Dancing in The Knee-Deep Midnight.
SHORT STORIES
- “A Toe For Jesus” (2024, Punk Noir) | Read it!
- “The P. I. and the E.T.” (2024, To The Dogs)
- “The Ho Ho Ho Hit” (2024, Punk Noir) | Read it!
- “Ferocious Infidelity” (2024, Trash Cat Lit) | Read it!
- “The Chugga-Chugga Toot-Toot Choo Choo Caper” (2025, Punk Noir) | Read it!
- “Lunch Break” (2025, Pistol Jim) | Read it!
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Their Kind of Town
Chicago Eyes
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
Why do I think of The Big Lebowski when I see the plot of A Toe for Jesus?
I’m a big Weagly fan. I was guest editor at Punk Noir when John sent the chugga-chugga story, so I was the first one to laugh! It was an honor!