Castle

So last year a new show on ABC started called Castle. It just sort of had a half season in the Spring but then got picked up to come back for a second season this Fall. My cousin Melanie, a woman of excellent taste, mentioned positive reviews about it on her blog in the Spring, and I simply need to concur. It's a procedural drama which isn't typically my cup of tea. (Can I use that idiom if I don't actually drink tea?) Procedural dramas, which are typically focused on police or courtroom stories, usually bore me- I was never into NYPD Blue or any of the Law & Order shows. I liked CSI for the first couple of seasons just because it was so new and different, but soon got over it. For me, its more about the characters than the crime plot. So I only like procedural dramas like the late Ally McBeal or the current Bones or The Mentalist because they have more humor and story arcs than traditional procedural dramas and they have quirky, likable casts.

Castle falls into this category. It stars the wonderful cult favorite Nathan Fillion as Richard Castle, a famous and arrogant mystery novelist who starts following a straight-laced female detective around to use her as a model for the lead character, Nikki Heat, in a new novel he is writing. She (Det. Kate Beckett, played by the lovely Stana Katic) is of course, not thrilled about this, but he is buddies with the Mayor and gets his way. Creative author that he is, he actually ends up quite an asset to the team, and as they both start to actually like each other but don't want to admit it, hilarity ensues. Currently in the show, the book he was writing based on Det. Beckett, a novel called Heat Wave, was just released with rave reviews and he just got a deal to make it a series and write three more novels based on the Nikki Heat character, aka, Det. Becket, and so she is stuck with him. A fun twist to the traditional crime drama show, and I can't imagine anyone but Nathan Fillion playing Castle.

Well, the writers of the show in reality actually wrote a full novel of Heat Wave, supposedly by 'Richard Castle,' complete with a dedication to the Becket character and reviews by real-life authors, and it came out this past Sept. 29th:

I would have read it right when it came out, but it actually had a bit of a waiting list at the library, which makes me happy, because I presume that means there are a lot of Castle fans out there. It was, as expected, a fairly typical detective mystery- clever, dramatic, sexy and action-packed. What is really interesting is that it really feels like the character Richard Castle wrote it. You can feel him in the humor and can picture the smug look that would have been on his face after writing a particularly ingenious plot twist or witticism. It was very entertaining, though I admit I probably would have just shrugged it off as one-more-generic-detective-novel if I wasn't having so much fun picturing the characters represented from the show and imagining what their reactions would be to reading it. So the book is not a Must Read, but the show, for me, is definitely a Must Watch. The show is on ABC on Monday nights at 9pm. (It got picked up for a full season- yay!)