Nick Carter The Great Spy System or, Nick Carters Promise to the President is a detective story featuring the famous detective Nick Carter first published in 1907, written by John R. Coryell. John Russell Coryell was a prolific dime novel author. He wrote under the Nicolas Carter and Bertha M. Clay house pseudonyms, and, like many of his fellow dime novelists under many other pseudonyms. This is the story of how Nick Carter, Master Detective, broke a foreign spy ring in Washington, DC in one night to keep his promise to the President. Nick Carter is a fictional character who began as a pulp fiction private detective in 1886 and has appeared in a variety of formats over more than a century. His father, Sin Carter, was also a detective and he taught young Nick some investigation techniques from early ages. After his fathers death during one case, Nick takes over the investigation and continues to work as a detective.