"So, what are your plans once Mama goes home?"
"Waddaya mean?"
"Well, you aren't a P.I. right now. So, what kind of trouble are you gonna get yourself into?"
"You know me. I'll find something."
"More likely it'll find you."
"No doubt. Are you tired?" I was beginning to fade.
"Not a bit." He turned on his side, took me in his arms, and began to make love to me.
"Chief..." I mumbled.
"Speakin' of trouble, Boss." He reached his hand down and began to tickle me.
And, with that, I laughed and said, "Carter Woodrow Wilson Jones!"
Author's Note
Thank you for buying and reading this book!
The plot and flow of this story came out of thin air, as with all the Nick & Carter books. I thought the next novel in this series would be set closer to Christmas but, apparently, we needed to make a detour into Carter's past and I'm glad we did!
You may have found that this book tries to address some of the questions raised by reviewers of the other novels about how realistic Nick & Carter's lives really are. They aren't real, obviously, and realism is not my goal. I prefer to have fantasy characters romping around in historical settings. Having said that, I also like drawing out the contrast between how things are in 2016 and how they were in 1953. Hopefully, I'm not hitting you over the head with these things. Subtlety is much more fun in my book.
I also hope you are enjoying the development of Nick, Carter, Marnie, and all their friends. As the stories continue, they are learning more and more about themselves. As Nick reflects upon in this book, 1953 has been a big year for all of them. And it isn't over yet.
We know, from our place in time, that their lives are going to change dramatically in the next thirty years and in ways that none of them can imagine. I hope you will join in on the fun of reading all about that as it happens in the upcoming books.
Many thanks, as always, to everyone who has read, reviewed, and emailed me about the Nick & Carter books. I didn't realize how amazing and fun that part of being an author would be when I started The Unexpected Heiress. Thanks again!
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the members of the Facebook group, "Remembering those classic aircraft and airlines," for helping me understand the ins and outs of the Lockheed Super Constellation aircraft. Through their help I was able to locate the luggage hold and figure out the length and type of runway that the Connie would need for landing and take off.
Thanks also to the same group, along with J.D. Sumner and David Hamilton in Albany, for helping me track down when the Albany Airport runway was paved. No one was able to discover for certain, and it was more interesting to have it still be grass sod as late as 1953. Otherwise, Nick would never have bought his own plane.
Many thanks to Marc Echeveste for checking over my legal assumptions to help me make sure everyone was saying and doing the right thing in the courtroom. He was particularly helpful in reminding me that artistic license is fun but abiding by the actual rules often provides a better setting. Any mistakes (particularly about whether Georgia rules allowed for pre-trial evidentiary hearings in 1953) are completely mine.
Historical Notes
The events in this book take place between Thursday, July 16, 1953, and Monday, August 17, 1953.
The primary characters are all fictional. There are, however, historical persons and locales portrayed in a fictional manner.
Albany, a small city located along the banks of the Flint River in Southwest Georgia, is depicted in mostly fictional terms in this book. There was a New Albany Hotel in the downtown area. It is now a senior living facility. It only has five stories. I gave it a sixth story so it could have a Presidential Suite and a Governor's Suite. U.S. Route 19 connects Albany to Thomasville through Baconton. That's about all that is based in fact. The locations of houses, businesses, and the cemetery are all fictitious.
Nick's musings about the power and the presence of the Ku Klux Klan are based on my own ideas and do not have any historical grounding.
Albany has a significant connection to the larger civil rights movement in the south. From the New Georgia Encyclopedia:
"According to traditional accounts, the Albany Movement began in fall 1961 and ended in summer 1962. It was the first mass movement in the modern civil rights era to have as its goal the desegregation of an entire community, and it resulted in the jailing of more than 1,000 African Americans in Albany and surrounding rural counties. Martin Luther King Jr. was drawn into the movement in December 1961 when hundreds of black protesters, including himself, were arrested in one week, but eight months later King left Albany admitting that he had failed to accomplish the movement's goals. When told as a chapter in the history of the national civil rights movement, Albany was important because of King's involvement and because of the lessons he learned that he would soon apply in Birmingham, Alabama. Out of Albany's failure, then, came Birmingham's success."
More Information
Nick Williams Mysteries
The Unexpected Heiress
The Amorous Attorney
The Sartorial Senator
The Laconic Lumberjack
The Perplexed Pumpkin
The Savage Son
The Mangled Mobster
The Iniquitous Investigator
The Voluptuous Vixen
The Sodden Sailor
The Excluded Exile
Nick & Carter Stories
An Enchanted Beginning
Golden Gate Love Stories
The One He Waited For
Their Own Hidden Island
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The Laconic Lumberjack (A Nick Williams Mystery Book 4) Page 21
