In the Still of the Night, by Frank W. Butterfield (Adventures of Eddie and White 4)

[Ulysses]

In the Still of the Night (Romantical Adventures of Whit & Eddie #4)
Frank W. Butterfield
Published by the author, 2019
Five stars

Well, this is awkward. I seem to have lost track of number four of the “Romantical Adventures of Whit and Eddie” in my long backlog, and skipped right over it. No wonder books 5 and 6 in the series seemed a little off. In fact, reviewing my notes, I missed book 5, too, which left me scratching my head with book 6. It is a testament to Frank Butterfield’s warm, comforting storytelling that messing up this badly not once but twice didn’t leave me completely disoriented—only slightly.

A lot happens in this sort of crucial volume in Frank Butterfield’s Daytona Beach spin-off from the Nick & Carter mystery books. The year is 2019, and Whit Hall and Eddie Smith, recently married, are moving into a new house in Daytona Beach. But things are getting weird. Are hackers trying to break into their state-of-the-art home security system? Does this have anything to do with Whit’s Ukrainian birth parents? Why does Billy Carmichael, a high-school chum of Whit’s, suddenly appear at their front door, flashing his FBI credentials while also waxing nostalgic over his long-ago friendship with Whit?

Whit and Eddie are still beset with personal emotional issues, which of course makes them like Nick and Carter—they’re still working out the kinks in their whirlwind courtship and marriage. They are both strong personalities, and not only do they have to deal with their families, they have to deal with Nick and Carter—something that made me rather envious. (And it says something about my pandemic state of mind that I’m envying fictious gay men who have the long-dead spirits of other gay men hanging around and offering them comfort and sometimes snarky advice).

Unlike Nick and Carter, who make me think of my parents in the 1940s, these men are substantially younger than I am, Whit in fact young enough to be my child. They bring a present-day immediacy to the story, while also adding a sort of “meta” level of awareness to the history of Nick and Carter—because Eddie has been reading the dictated notes that Nick left behind, which are clearly the basis for all those 30-plus books I read.

Also, this book delves into exactly what happened at the end of Nick and Carter’s lives, something that has only been alluded to in passing in other places in Frank Butterfield’s oeuvre. Some unexpected big news and an unscheduled trip to San Francisco as hurricane Dorian bears down on Daytona make this for an action- and emotion-packed installment.

OK, I’m caught up, and now I can read book 7. Sheesh.