Heat Wave by Richard Castle (2010)

This was a good idea, so I picked it up, but was so poorly executed, I didn't get more than a quarter of the way through.

Richard Castle is a character on the TV show Castle, which I enjoy. On the show, he is a well know mystery novel writer, who got permission to tail Detective Kate Beckett of the NY Police Department. Of course sparks fly between them, they actually work pretty well together, but the relationship doesn't get beyond that, just as between Brennan and Boothe in Bones. Out of the things Castle sees, he gets ideas for more books and publishes one called Heat Wave, where Nikki Heat is a thinly disguised Kate Beckett. Much of the subplot revolves around the publishing of the book, whether Beckett will read it or not, Castle's fame, etc. So, someone had the brilliant idea to actually publish a book called Heat Wave supposedly by Richard Castle. The idea was good, the execution of it very poor. If he was such a famous author, I would hope he would also be a decent writer. This was written like a parody of one of the TV scripts for the series. Nathan Fillion can give one look that says it all, but when they try to put it in words, it comes out all wrong. It might have been better if Fillion had been the one reading the audio book, as he could put some of the feeling into it, but the reader just makes it sound cheap. The other thing I miss is the richness of character. I especially miss Castle's scenes at home with his daughter and mother. He always learns something from them that he can apply to the case at hand. Maybe they showed up later in the book, but I didn't have the energy to go any further with it.