Site icon The Thrilling Detective Web Site

Nick Williams & Carter Jones

kevinburtonsmith

Created by Frank W. Butterfield

Ever since Hammett dropped Nick and Nora on an unsuspecting world, we’ve had dozens, if not hundreds, of couples trying to fill their well-to-do detecting shoes.

But Frank W. Butterfield’s private investigator NICK WILLIAMS, and his “husband” CARTER JONES , a firefighter originally from Georgia, are horses of a different colour, in a series of M/M historicals. But hey, I guess if you’re going to be gay Butterfield picked the right town, even if it is the 1950s. And it always helps to have money, which Nick does. He’s considered the “richest homosexual in San Francisco.”

Which means he doesn’t have to work all that much, much to the dismay of his pragmatic secretary, Marnie Wilson.

Also around — at least when Nick and Carter — are in town (they travel a lot) are Jeffrey Klein, Esquire, Nick’s friend and lawyer, whose practice seems to lasrgely consist of defending people arrested in police raids in the Tenderloin, and Lt. Mike Robertson of the SFPD, Nick’s first love and best friend.

The series follows Nick and Carter’s adventures, as they face the challenges of publicly outing themselves long, before the term even existed, insisting on building a life together. There’s a lot of period detail in the series, and loads of local colour, while Nick and Carter enjoy the good life, swapping wisecracks, banter and cocktails all the way. And despite what feels like an obvious spin on Hammett’s smug lovebirds, the author himself thinks of the series as “a satirical riff on Earl Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason novels.”

So go figure.  I’m just amazed he even has time to discuss his inspirations. He writes and publishes so damn lightning fast, that this series, only started in 2016, has already over thirty books, and at least two spin-off series already (no eyes in those), and even the Nick and Carter series, once set so firmly in the fifties, has bled into the mid-sixties, with ambitious plans for Nick and Carter to “legally marry in the summer of 2008 at the ages of 84 and 86, respectively.” At the rate Butterfield’s going that might be next week or so…

And to further muck with the time/space continuum, in 2020  the author began the Nick and Carter Holiday series, an ambitious string of short stories all centered around specific holidays, but reimagined from the 1920s to 2008.

We were back in more familiar settings of the fifties. when the ever-prolific Butterfield spun off yet another series, The Carter Jones Stories, in 2021–this time told entirely from Carter’s viewpoint.

NOVELS

NOVELS (THE CARTER JONES STORIES)

SHORT STORIES & NOVELLAS

SHORT STORIES (THE HOLIDAY SERIES)

COLLECTIONS

Suggested by Pekka. Report and snarky remarks respectfully added by Kevin Burton Smith.

 
Exit mobile version