Heat Wave (Richard Castle)

I couldn't resist reading this just for the novelty value. Castle is a TV show about this writer, Richard Castle, who uses his pull with the mayor to get permission to follow along with a NYC homicide unit, headed by detective Kate Beckett. In the show, he writes a novel called Heat Wave about the tough and gorgeous detective Nikki Heat, who is based on the real-life (within the show) Kate Beckett. So now Hyperion has put out that book, the fiction-within-a-fiction, allegedly by the (fictional) Richard Castle. The book features blurbs from actual writers (who appear occasionally on the show as Castle's writer buddies) and an interview with the (still fictional) author. The whole thing is really very well done. The story itself is so-so. The mystery is interesting, the action engaging, and so on, but there's nothing outstanding. The best-selling, blockbuster novelist is still fictional. But I had fun reading it.