Jenny Nicolay and Sawyer Finn are agent with the CIA.
That is a true statement, or at least it will be some time into the set of recorded adventures we have available about this very enjoyable and interesting couple. At the start of those tales, though the line would more accurately be:
Jenny Nicolay and Sawyer Finn are the Spies of Texas.
Okay, that is a series name, not an official designation but it is eye-catching; it certainly caught mine. As did the tag line on the first recorded adventure, "She has secrets. He's a detective. Some things should stay dead & buried." It made me want to know what things and why. The one for the second is pretty good as well, "To clear her name, they must learn her father's".
The adventures of this unlikely partnership take place starting with the end of the 40s; 1949, to be exact. The locale is the great state of Texas (no surprise there) where in the small city of Lake Falls, Sawyer Finn is a home town boy and Jenny Nicolay is a very recent newcomer to the community.
Finn is was born and raised in that city though he did leave to go to Yale, something that Nicolay will tease him about frequently as she is from the Boston area and attended Harvard. His return was expected by everyone to be followed by his joining his father's general store, already called Finn & Sons. Finn had a different plan in mind, wanting to open up shop as a private eye which did not sit well with his father and his mother refused to take serious, fully expected that after a year of silliness he would be heading back to college to get a law degree.
Nicolay, as mentioned, was a foreigner - or she might as well be having a Bostonian accent and hailing from somewhere other than Texas. Why she chose Lake Falls is a mystery to everyone because she is not a person to tell much about herself. Why she chose, if she did in fact choose it herself, to leave Massassachusetts is yet another mystery but we get the idea soon enough that it has something to do with her father and that something was not a good thing. She is 21 years old and shows up in town with not a lot of money and immediately decides that being a partner in a private detective firm was a very good idea.
At this point it would be good to note that Finn was low on funds himself and had no desire for a partner. He said no. Nicolay has a little problem with that adverb so in a manner we will get accustomed to, she ignored it. Finn, recognizes he was losing, agreed to take her on as a secretary. She smiled fondly and went on with her plans. All this takes place very early in the first recorded adventure.
So how did this pair move from being mismatched 'partners' in a investigation agency in Texas end up as operatives for the much larger Agency in D.C.? Well, it seems that there were some Russian spies ... but that would be telling.