I can't quite decide whether this is a terribly clever idea or one of the most blatant pieces of within series merchandising advertising ever. For those of you not familiar with Castle the TV series it features crime-novelist, Richard Castle, ostensibly shadowing Homicide Detective Kate Beckett for research purposes. Castle refashions Beckett as his character Nikki Heat and the first of his Nikki Heat novels is Heat Wave (available from all good book sellers - or at least Amazon).
( Reading it is a very odd experience )
So in summary, hmm..., this is an OK detective novel, I think it falls short as a Castle novel, but is fascinating as the novel Castle wrote within the show. I'm not sure I was fascinated enough to pick up the next two novels in the series. It's definitely an interesting experiment in the arena of tie-in merchandising and I'd be interested in seeing more shows attempt something like this, that can both illuminate canon and be its own thing without worrying about contradicting canon. But at the end of the day, Nikki Heat aside, I wasn't really invested in any of the characters and this needed more.
So in summary, hmm..., this is an OK detective novel, I think it falls short as a Castle novel, but is fascinating as the novel Castle wrote within the show. I'm not sure I was fascinated enough to pick up the next two novels in the series. It's definitely an interesting experiment in the arena of tie-in merchandising and I'd be interested in seeing more shows attempt something like this, that can both illuminate canon and be its own thing without worrying about contradicting canon. But at the end of the day, Nikki Heat aside, I wasn't really invested in any of the characters and this needed more.