by Jim Guigli

Details at the end of this post on how to enter to win Kindle versions of some of Jim’s short stories.

I like to read and write mystery stories, especially private detective stories. My fictional private detective, Bart Lasiter, began life in 2006 in my Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Grand Prize winning sentence:

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you’ve had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

Bart Lasiter worked as a patrol officer for the city of Berkeley, California, for twelve years before moving north to Sacramento to open his own detective agency, Lasiter Investigations.

Bart works in Old Town Sacramento, also known as Old Sacramento, or Old Sac. His tiny live-in office is on Second Street, one of the three venues — Second Street, Firehouse Alley, and Front Street — sandwiched between the Sacramento River and the parallel Interstate 5. Bart’s partner is Agamemnon, a big orange fixed-male tabby.

Jim Guigli

While Bart loves his historic Old Sacramento neighborhood and learning investigation, he’s never been very good at finances, or women. He carries baggage from his teenage, summer-of-love hippie mother, who named him after Black Bart, the Wells Fargo bandit, and then dragged him through the sixties and seventies from one commune to another. Bart would like to laugh and keep things light, but his office is where the semi-humorous collides with the semi-serious.

Barely staying afloat in the PI business, Bart would be homeless if his live-in office were owned by anyone other than his former Berkeley PD training officer and friend, Fred Clifford, now retired and living on the Sacramento River.

Bart’s adventures have appeared on Kindle in Bad News for a Ghost, a novelette where Bart goes underground to catch a ghost, and includes a bonus short story, Bart’s First Arrest. In the latest issue of Rock and a Hard Place Magazine (Issue 7 Winter 2021/2022), Bart investigates a kidnapping in the short story Looking for Mishka. A Flash Fiction Bart story, Cane Mutiny, is scheduled for publication in May in Pulp Modern Flash. Later this year, a novel, Under the Black Flag, will tell the story of Bart’s biggest case, protecting a beautiful, wealthy woman while he battles pirates on Lake Tahoe.

To enter to win a Kindle copy of Rock and a Hard Place Magazine Issue 7 (Winter 2021/2022) and of the novelette Bad News for a Ghost, simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line “bart,” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen May 7, 2022. U.S. residents only, and you must be 18 or older to enter. You can read our privacy statement here if you like.

Check out other mystery articles, reviews, book giveaways & mystery short stories in our mystery section. And join our mystery Facebook group to keep up with everything mystery we post, and have a chance at some extra giveaways. Be sure to check out our new mystery podcast too with mystery short stories, and first chapters read by local actors. A new episode went up last week.

Jim Guigli is retired and lives near Sacramento with his wife, Fran, and two Labrador Retrievers. He is a member of California Writers Club, Sacramento Suburban Writers Club, and Public Safety Writers Association.