The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

The Seductive Sellout (Adventures of Nick & Carter 6)
By Frank W. Butterfield
Published by the author, 2022
Five stars

OK, this was a really good one. Wrapping up the trio-within-a-series, “The Seductive Sellout” completes a painful and dramatic moment in Carter and Nick’s middle-aged lives. This book offers a dramatic climax to the events begun in the Sordid Socialite and carried into darker, uglier territory in The Useful Uncle. You need to read all three. It’s very powerful, not to mention exciting.

This book also offers two other critical culminations: a dramatic change of status in the world for Nick & Carter, and an equally dramatic expansion of Nick’s family (and his understanding of his roots).

Frank Butterfield’s storytelling is at its best in this book, combining political intrigue with emotional turning points. Butterfield’s shocking revelations about the moral ambiguity of our own federal government are not really any surprise to a conscious American today, but still something we certainly didn’t understand as a nation back when I was fifteen years old.

It is startling how these two men have grown at the hands of their creator/author. Carter, the big fireman good-ol’-boy from Georgia, now speaking fluent French to waiters in fancy hotels. Nick, who had trouble spending his great-uncle’s ill-gotten gains, now buys airlines and hotels with the flick of a fountain pen. These gentle, deeply moral men have been dragged into the worst that humanity can offer, and somehow remain uncorrupted, despite the evil they’ve witnessed. The chosen family that surrounds them—from Mike and Greg to Marnie and Robert—have grown with them, and have continued to be their anchor in an ever-shifting world.

There is even a bit of weird tongue-in-cheek meta-ness going on in this episode and it made me laugh out loud.

I was fifteen at the moment in history that this book is set. Butterfield manages to bring that era back to life vividly. His skill as a narrator and world-builder is remarkable.