This is fan fiction of a sort for the TV show Castle. I have only seen 1 episode of the show so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got into this book. Heat Wave is a fun, fast-paced murder mystery. Detective Nikki Heat is brought onto a case that involves the murder of Matthew Starr, a real estate baron of New York. Jameson Rook, a reporter, manages to get himself attached to the investigation.

The action keeps the story moving along at a fast clip. There’s a little romance between Heat and Rook but it didn’t distract from the murder mystery. The plot itself was pretty straight forward, the mystery being fairly easy to unravel by the reader if not the main characters.

There are several sidekicks in the story, like detectives Ochoa and Raley and the medical examiner Lauren Parry. Mostly, they fade into the background and go unnoticed. Lauren has a few moments where her personality shows through. The cast of characters attempts various quips and jokes but much of it comes off flat. I was much more into the serious scenes. The action scenes were usually well done.

Over all, I liked Nikki Heat as a character. I will enjoy getting to know more about her in future books. While it was a quick, easy read, it had it’s charms. 3.5/5 stars

Driving Heat
by Richard Castle
Book 7 of Nikki Heat

One of the things that bugged me the most about these Nikki Heat books has always been the summary blurbs--they always try so hard to be exclamation point, and "Big Awesome Words!" worthy, that it just sounds super lame.  If the ghost writers for Richard Castle put as much effort into the actual crime thriller story outline and plot as they did being meta about the television series, or making the book out to be like it was written by "New York Times Bestselling Author," the books might be more than just serviceably enjoyable.

Well, make it two things:  I also don't like how over-the-top the writing styles sometimes get.  Too deliberate in making out the main character, Nikki Heat, to seem like a super perfect super detective, and too deliberate in singling her out as the only super perfect super detective who ever does anything right.  It can get annoying pretty quickly.

Driving Heat is another installment of the Nikki Heat series that is decently entertaining, but can get a bit tedious in how long it takes to outline a scene, or a few actions that should ideally only require a few words.  It also doesn't help that I found the characters and their actions all frustrating, as if everyone was deliberately being difficult to each other just to piss each other off.  It made for a lot of unnecessary drama that almost felt childish.

I will give the book props on the insights of Nikki's new development in how much more complicated it is to be promoted to a higher position of power than one would have thought.  Becoming Captain of the precinct brought to light all the banal, menial work that a leader also has to deal with, like little complaints from all the staff, and mountains of paperwork, tedious meetings, signing service contracts with the vending machine company, and very little time for actual crime fighting.  It makes me wonder if Nikki understands how different her role will be now that she's not simply in charge of a small homicide detective squad--it DID get me frustrated each time she would rush off to investigate the murder when what she really needed to be doing was delegating tasks to her team, rather than trying to do everything by herself.


The beginning of the book was not a strong start, and the build up was also a bit lackluster.  The second half of the book, after the entire NYPD's computer network got hacked, was actually a bit more interesting, but only because it does a pretty good job of putting into perspective how much we, as a society, depend on computer technology and the ease of access thanks to internet resources.

I actually found it pretty amusing to see Captain Heat rushing off to the library for some of her sources.

HOWEVER, what didn't make sense to me was why everyone made it seem like they were transported back into the pre-internet age when really only the functioning government organizations had been hacked in New York.  Apparently all personal cell phones, personal internet, non-government computers were still workable.  While understanding that crucial, confidential police investigation evidence and documents couldn't be sent via non-encrypted channels, it seemed a bit extreme that none of our homicide detectives had their own personal laptops or hot spots of which to conduct some of their online researches.

Sure, there was no accessing police network documents, but did Nikki really have to rush off to the library to research some of the information she needed to find?

Anyway, as I'd stated somewhere, this book actually felt like it was a lot longer than it really is.  It even felt like there were more than one story line taking place as the book progressed.  And to be honest, without having much interest in watching anymore of the television series, I don't know if I'll be interested in continuing this book series either.  Driving Heat is entertaining in some aspects, and if you're a fan of the series (television or book), then it will still be right up your alley.

There are continued, and fleeting meta references to the television show, Castle, and even a drop about Firefly and Nathan Fillion every so often.  But if you've grown tired of these things and find them more wearisome than amusing... well, this book won't really do much for you.


***

Booklikes-opoly

Roll #25:
This book is tagged 'thriller' on GR.

Page Count:  336
Cash Award:  +$6.00

Updated Bank Balance:  $153.00

I included a few at top of this post but see the entire list at https://www.fictfact.com/BookReleaseCalendar by clicking on Tuesday, May 2.

Guess gearing up for spring vacations and summer reading?

Raging Heat -- Richard Castle

Book 6 of Nikki Heat

Well... more like 3.75 Stars... but I can't only fill in a point or two of the star on the rating thingy.  So I'll just statistically give it that 4 Star rating even if it isn't quite there.

Because I don't really, REALLY love this book, but I DID like it enough to mentally give it a 4 Star rating while I was reading it. But then some other things happened that bugged me a bit and made me think: "The detectives on Castle wouldn't act like that!" or "Detective Beckett would have handled this situation differently!" or some other nonsensical exclamation...

But to be totally honest, if you look at this book in a non-Castle-comparison way, it was a very well written crime thriller. But then it would drop meta-details here and there, with that continuous subliminal message to "Watch Castle the television series on ABC", and I'm back to making my comparisons.

All-in-all, I am actually very pleased with this installment of the Nikki Heat series--it may even be the better written, personally most favorite book of this series to date. I haven't yet read the newest release, Driving Heat, but I am very much hoping for some of the same kind of writing, narration, and story progression.

Raging Heat may not have had as many funny quips as previous installments (which I missed, because I love one-liners and you can't have a meta-fictional Richard Castle as Jameson Rook without those subtle, yet ingenious one-liners of which Jameson Rook actually kind of fails at), but Raging Heat DID have an engaging story plot with a introductory that started with a literal bang. It did not drag out action sequences or simple scenes, it moved smoothly from Point A to Point B without inserting useless side tangents...

Simply put, I am very much pleasantly surprised. And while the meta-references to Castle can get a little tedious, I actually DO like those extremely rare references to Firefly.

***

This book is a pre-chosen participant in the following Reading Challenge(s):

• 2015 Reading Assignment Challenge hosted by Because Reading and Fantasy is More Fun