Deadly Heat by Richard Castle

Deadly Heat is the fifth book in the Nikki Heat series by the totally fictitious author Richard Castle (played by the ruggedly handsome Nathan Fillion on the TV show Castle), and as with the previous four it’s a damn fine read.

I’ve now read enough of these books that it’s become second nature to imagine the characters as their counterparts from the TV show, and as a result getting into the story is becoming easier and easier. I also think that the author, whoever he or she truly is, has finally found their style and is consequently delivering a much more polished narrative than with the first book or two.

This outing follows on almost immediately from the events of the fourth book Frozen Heat, so it’s not as readable as a standalone as the others are. However, there’s enough back story exposition given in the first half of the book that doing so wouldn’t necessarily leave the reader too confused.

The story itself deals with two cases this time; the first being Nikki Heat’s continued search for the man responsible for her mother’s murder and the second being the arrival of a serial killer in New York. Both plotlines are handled with plenty of skill, and are woven together in such a way that the reader has to pay attention in order to keep up with the clues as they’re thrown out by the author. By the end of the book there have been enough twists and turns along the way to satisfy any reader of modern crime fiction.

As with the rest of tis series I’d certainly recommend it to other fans of crime fiction, as well as to fans of the TV show that spawned these books, and I’m definitely looking forward to reading book six, Raging Heat, next month.