The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

You’re the Top (Whit & Eddie #3)
By Frank W. Butterfield
Published by the author, 2019
Four stars

It’s all getting kind of meta.

I set Frank Butterfield’s books aside for when I need comfort. His casual, yet somehow weirdly detailed and completely unaffected writing style is, for me, like a cozy robe. Now that he’s retired the Nick and Carter mysteries (preparing for a new series that takes our boys into middle age and the rest of their long lives), I turn to the Whit & Eddie books for that same sense of familiarity, that same warm prose.

Then, in this third installment of Whit & Eddie’s whirlwind relationship (six months and married!), it all began to get clear. Nick and Carter – whom Eddie never knew – are still very much around, and not just in the guise of Mario and Bob, their heirs. Nick’s great uncle Paul is still around, too, because Eddie’s channeling abilities seem to focus on Paul, even though Nick and Carter use him as well.

While the plot in this book is about Whit’s nascent career as an actor for Monumental Pictures, and a trip to British Columbia for filming, it is actually (I realized) all about a moment of clarity in these men’s lives that is very much tied to the gone-but-not-forgotten gay spirits who communicate through them. This is in truth a much more complicated scenario about spiritual connection that, if you’re into that sort of thing, is rather stunning.

The meta-ness, of course, lies in the fact that Eddie is, shall we say, not at all unlike the author himself, and I can’t help but feel that we’re seeing the world more directly through the author’s eyes than ever before. This is real time today, not a romanticized past; but Whit and Eddie are closely linked to that past because of Eddie’s spiritual abilities. It isn’t quite clear – yet – where this is going to go, but I realized as I finished “You’re the Top” that I definitely want to be there to find out.