Charade

I wasn’t a person, I realized. Not a man, not a woman. Not even alive, not really. Xenos had killed me as surely as if he’d put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger. I was merely a ghost with unfinished business, given an extension of a few precious hours to see it done.

I wasn’t a man who’d been robbed of his life and was desperately clinging on by his fingernails. Instead, I was cheating death in a deadly game of hide and seek where I’d taken temporary refuge from the grim reaper in Jessie’s body.

— Chase

Jump to:

• Synopsis
• Starring
• Main Characters
• Supporting Characters
• Heroes
• Antagonists
• Civilians
• Cameos/Mentions
• Groups/Organizations
• Locations/Geography
• Items and Equipment
• Significant World Events
• Fun Stuff
• Soundtrack
• Image Gallery

Synopsis

After he runs afoul of a sinister body swapper, a world-weary detective with a shady past finds himself trapped in the body of a beautiful and brazen stripper. But as his mind starts to fade and hers begins to take over, he soon realizes that he only has 24 hours left to live before he fades away entirely. 24 hours to solve his own murder and bring his killer to justice.

Starring

Main Characters

• Salinger Chase / Charade, a cynical hard-bitten detective who gets trapped in a stripper's body and has only 24 hours to live
• Jessie Harber, a young dancer at Unmasked and sometime lover of Chase
• Victoria Dunne, a former victim of Xenos, looking to settle the score

Supporting Characters

Antagonists

• Xenos, a cunning body-swapping villain
• Flame and Fortune, an aging married couple and former villains, looking to work some angles
• Red Jacket and High-Tops, a pair of thugs who give our heroes a hard time

Civilians

• Amelia Bettencourt and her date Trey, VIP members at Club Nocturne
• Madeline Clarice Capshaw, Chase's former lover who may have killed her husband
• Ethan Foster, head of the Fraud Investigations Unit at Faraday Insurance, who contracts work out to Chase
• Employees/Associates at Unmasked, a strip club with dancers who dress like metahumans
• Desmond Marcks, who owns the club
• Tia Barron, a bartender
• Emmet, a delivery guy
• Alex Keyes, a FCPD detective who does work for Marcks and is sweet on Jessie
• "Mikey," a bouncer (off-duty cop)
• Jessie Harber, a dancer dressed as Dollface
• Ashlyn, a dancer dressed as Punchline
• A dancer dressed as Copykitten
• A dancer dressed as Ephemeral
• A waitress dressed as Glitterati
• A dancer dressed as Plutonium Blonde

Cameos/Mentions

• Arcturus, a member of The Liberty Squadron
• The Atomic Slime, a cautionary tale for the children of the city
• Brobdingagian, a superhero able to grow to tremendous size
• Battlecrab, an aquatic-themed villain
• Brobdingnagian, a hero able to grow to tremendous size
• Augustus Capshaw (deceased), Madeline's former husband who died under mysterious circumstances
• Chimera, a former identity used by Xenos
• Shepherd Cochran, a millionaire implied to share the Arcturus identity
• Copykitten, a female hero able to make duplicates of herself
• Darkmancer, a hero with darkness powers transformed into a sexy superheroine
• Doctor Malevolence, a world-class archvillain
• Dollface, a villainess who dresses up in juvenile little girl dresses
• Cleveland Dunne (deceased), Victoria's elderly husband who performs services for Xenos
• Ephemeral, a heroine who's a member of The Liberty Squadron, and was not flattered to have a stripper impersonate her
• Glitterati, a former heroine
• Grimdark, a villain powerful enough to fight the Liberty Squadron
• Lucent (presumably deceased), a hero for whom a street was named
• Marty Maddox, owner of AGON Technologies
• Mr. Marchetti, a young male relative of Ferdinand Marchetti associated with the Marchetti Crime Family
• Pinball Wizard, a metahuman who uses "technospheres"
• Plutonium Blonde, a blonde metahuman
• Power Piranha, an aquatic themed villain
• Procyon I (deceased), a raccoon-themed hero beloved by all
• Procyon II, formerly Kid Procyon, now taking up his mentor's mantle as a raccoon-themed hero
• Procyon Lass (deceased), a former sidekick of Procyon, seemingly killed in the line of duty
• Promethean, leader of The Liberty Squadron and an A-list superhero
• Punchline, a female metahuman
• Tinsel, a member of The Liberty Squadron
• Parker Wise, a millionaire implied to share the Arcturus identity

Groups/Organizations

• Faraday Insurance, where your life (insurance) is in their hands
• HeroVerse News, where every story is a super story!

Mentioned

• AGON Technologies, the company Marty Maddox owns
• Faraday City Police Department, Faraday's finest!
• Faraday Labs, creators of wondrous tech
• Superhero Registration, where heroes register with the law
• Gangs:
• Hemlocks
• The Marchetti Crime Family
• Superhero Groups:
• The Liberty Squadron, Faraday City's premier hero team

Locations / Geography

• Faraday City, a city of superheroes!
• The Carrington Suites Hotel, a posh high-end hotel for the very wealthy
• Chase's place, a combination office and apartment in a seedy part of town where Chase lives and runs a detective agency
• Club Nocturne, a night club and cabaret seemingly taken straight out of the 1940s
• Lucent Avenue, where Tia Barron lives
• The Spire, a prominent Faraday City Landmark
• Unmasked, a strip club that features dancers who dress like supers, with connections to The Marchetti Crime Family
• Xenos's Warp Space storage - expanded size, with Xenos's collected treasures

Mentioned

• Starfall Headquarters

Items and Equipment

• Chase's gold Zippo lighter
• Metahuman Trackers (i.e. HeroTracker)
• HeroVerse News Drone
• Xenos's IntelliComm ("iComm")
• Police Drone
• Warp Space Storage (Warp Locker)

Mentioned

• Chimera's Armor (Mark II)

Significant World Events

Mentioned

• The deaths of Procyon and Procyon Lass. A city mourns.
• The Turning Point

Fun Stuff

Soundtrack

Listen to the full playlist on YouTube!

• Sympathy For The Devil by The Rolling Stones (Xenos's Theme)
• Strip club songs at Unmasked:
• Armageddon It by Def Leppard (Music for Plutionium Blonde)
• Shoot to Thrill by AC/DC
• Dolls by Bella Poarch (Music for Dollface)
• All She Wants to Do Is Dance by Don Henley (Jessie's Theme)
• Creep (Radiohead Cover) by Postmodern Jukebox ft. Haley Reinhart (Victoria's Theme, sung at Club Nocturne)
• Suicide Blonde by INXS (Closing credits music)
• Charade (instrumental) by Henry Mancini (Charade's Theme)

Genre:
Neo-Noir, Crime, Mystery
Rating: R
Year Published: 2024
Word count: 73k

Where to read:

• Fictionmania / BigCloset