Review: Naked Heat by Richard Castle

Naked Heat by Richard Castle
Nikki Heat #2
Publisher: Hyperion
Crime Fiction, Media Tie-in
Purchased for my collection
4 stars

Synopsis

Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook are together again in Richard Castle's thrilling follow-up to his "New York Times" bestseller, "Heat Wave." When New York's most vicious gossip columnist, Cassidy Towne, is found dead, Heat uncovers a gallery of high profile suspects, all with compelling motives for killing the most feared muckraker in Manhattan. Heat's murder investigation is complicated by her surprise reunion with superstar magazine journalist Jameson Rook. In the wake of their recent breakup, Nikki would rather not deal with their raw emotional baggage. But the handsome, wise-cracking Pulitzer Prize-winning writer's personal involvement in the case forces her to team up with Rook anyway. The residue of their unresolved romantic conflict and crackling sexual tension fills the air as Heat and Rook embark on a search for a killer among celebrities and mobsters, singers and hookers, pro athletes and shamed politicians. This new, explosive case brings on the heat in the glittery world of secrets, cover-ups, and scandals.

The Nikki Heat series are tie-ins with the Castle television series on ABC. If you have not seen the series, it follows Richard Castle, a very popular writer of crime fiction, who begins observing a team of NYPD detectives in order to gain inspiration for a new book series following a female NYPD detective, Nikki Heat. In the series, Castle's first Nikki Heat book, Heat Wave, is released at the beginning of Season 2. Around the same time, the book was available for sale to us. And so it's continued; when a book is published in the show, its available in our stores. If you pick up a hardcover copy of any book in the series, you are greeted with a picture of Nathan Fillion, as Richard Castle, on the back cover with the author blurb (its inside the back cover on the paperbacks).

If you like the tv show, you are probably going to like the book series. They really read a great deal like an episode of the show (please forgive the continued use of 'they', I read the first book last year, hence they). Events from the series become part of the novels, and the "real" detectives that Castle works with inspire most of the characters in the books. This wasn't a deep, or difficult read. It's light, fun, and has the snarky humor. And of course, Firefly references