My husband and I have been watching Castle on ABC. It’s a cop drama/comedy starring Nathan Fillion. (I love him, by the way.) The premise is that Richard Castle, a mystery author, is following around a police detective by the name of Kate Beckett. The interplay between Castle and Beckett is wonderful.
In one episode, we see the book that Rick based on Detective Beckett titled Heat Wave. We also hear segments of the book within the show. As a fan of the show, I had to see how the book matched to the parts mentioned on the show (Yes, I realize that was just what they were hoping for). I also wanted to see if the chemistry between the main characters was maintained in the novel.
The book is set up like it is completely real, much like the books published under the Richard Bachman alias. Richard Castle’s author’s biography and picture are included on the dust jacket. The dedication is to Detective Beckett and the imaginary Precinct 12. Its interesting to me to see the cross-media trend work in the “opposite” direction. Usually it works from print to film, not from film to print. There are novelizations of movie, but rarely are fictional pieces of literature mentioned in film or on a tv show transferred into print.
The detective genre is not my normal genre. The interplay from the show did come across in the dialogue in the novel. The writer in the novel is Jameson Rook, and he’s a reporter. I think it worked even better for me, since I kept hearing the lead character as Nathan Fillion. If you like cop/detective stories, like CSI, you will probably enjoy this. It’s a very short and easy read. I’d qualify this as a vacation read.
