mysteries

The Clockwork Scarab

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by Colleen Gleason
ages: 12+
First sentence: “There are a limited number of excuses for a young, intelligent woman of seventeen to be traversing the fog-shrouded streets of London at midnight.”
Review copy pilfered off the ARC shelves at my place of employment.

Years ago, I remember when Colleen Gleason came out with the Gardella vampire books. I won the first one, if I remember right, and I remember liking it quite a bit. And so, when I got wind that she was writing a YA books, starring the “niece” of Sherlock Holmes and the half-sister of Braham Stoker, I was excited. And the cover is sooo pretty. I had high hopes.

The basic story is this: There have been a series of disappearances and apparent suicides in late-19th century socialite London. Miss Holmes and Miss Stoker are invited by Miss Irene Adler (I had to remind myself who she was), to help assist in this investigation. There are suspicious circumstances surrounding the deaths/disappearances of the girls, and there’s a mechanical scarab left at every scene. There are, of course, several love interests, including a Lieutenant, a mysterious gentleman who goes by the name of Pix, and (most interesting), a time traveler from the future.

That’s all the plot I got from the handful of pages I read. See, in spite of my high expectations (or perhaps because of them?), I couldn’t make it very far in this one. It just wasn’t clicking for me. Miss Holmes was interesting, but Miss Stoker was… off. And I was put off by the talk of clothes and hair, and the swooning over the boys. Much like Etiquette & Espionage, I felt like Gleason was dumbing herself down, and that wasn’t sitting right with me.

True, it has all the markings of a good YA mystery, but in the end, I bailed.

Frozen Heat

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by Richard Castle
ages: adult
First sentence: “Oh, yeah, that’s it Rook,’ said Nikki Heat.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: Heat Wave,  Naked Heat, Heat Rises

On the one hand, I miss the fluff of the first two novels in this series. It used to be that it’d just be a recap of the season, with a plot that loosely ties together different episodes. But, starting in the third book, these took on a life of their own, and in this one there was very little about the season that I recognized. I wonder if that’s because there isn’t much to work with, or because the story in the books is so far removed from the story on the show that it really is its own animal now.

That isn’t to say that I didn’t like it: I did. But much like seasons 3 and 4 of Castle, the books have become more serious, and I can’t help but miss the fluff.

It’s been 10 years since her mother’s murder, and although Nikki Heat has moved on, she hasn’t forgotten. So, when a woman shows up dead in a meat truck, shoved inside Nikki’s mother’s suitcase, she realizes that she has her first lead on her mother’s case in a long, long time. She digs in, and comes across firewalls — in her precinct, in her personal life, in the secrets she’s digging up  — and is thwarted on every turn by the dead bodies that keep piling up.

Of course, her lover and sometimes partner, journalist Jameson Rook, is there to help sort out the puzzle pieces, whisk her off to Paris (for research! And for a RTWOTC — Romantic Trip While On The Case),  and to be emotional support when things get too much for the stoic Nikki Heat.

Hubby asked me when I finished how this held up as a mystery. Honestly, I’m not sure. I’m not well-versed enough in the genre to tell if this was a good mystery, or if it was just a by-the-numbers one. But, I was entertained, it did keep me reading, and I didn’t figure out the twist ending (though, to tell the truth, I wasn’t working that hard, either.)  But, since it’s so far removed from the show at this point and has resolved things that the show has left hanging, I’m curious to see what the writer(s) of this one come up for next year’s book.

Could be interesting.

Heat Rises

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by Richard Castle
ages: adult
First sentence: “The thing about New York City is you never know what’s behind a door.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Nikki Heat is investigating the murder of a local parish priest, found at an S&M studio (is that what they’re called?). The investigation takes her in all sorts of directions, but then she’s called off the investigation, on the orders of her precinct captain. It’s nothing, he assures her. Which only makes her — and her lover, companion, sometimes partner, Jameson Rook — more suspicious. And since Nikki Heat doesn’t give up, she ends up digging into things she really shouldn’t have.

I’m realizing that the books really do follow not only the plots from the season (yes, this one has elements from Castle season 3 episodes), but also the mood. Which means, this book wasn’t as fun as either Heat Wave or
Naked Heat. Not to say that there wasn’t fun moments (like the passing Firefly reference? Cracked me up.) in the book. There were. It just wasn’t as fun as the previous two. (Also: not as sexy or foul; they really pulled back on the language and the sex was entirely off-screen.) It’s still good brain candy, and it was gratifying to see Nikki do so much entirely on her own. She really does rock.

Oh, and if you’ve seen the entire season 3, there’s a nice twist on the ending in the book. Which means, of course, that there will be a fourth. And yes, I will read it. (Hopefully, considering the way season 4 is going, the next book will be more fun to read overall.)

Naked Heat

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by Richard Castle
ages: adult
First sentence: “Nikki Heat pondered red lights and why they seemed to las so much longer when there was no traffic.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Oh, you knew this review was coming.

Yep.

I figured, since I’ve already caved into the publicity machine that is ABC, and the meta-ness of it all (and am really kind of finding it all fun and games), what the heck. Why not read the second one?

Besides, it’s a really good book to read when I’m on the elliptical at the gym: engaging, but not hard to follow.

As far as the book itself: I think it holds up better than the first book as a novel. Sure, it’s still in-jokes from the series (the book opener is lifted pretty much straight from the season 3 TV opener), and the basic plot lifts from a few episodes of season 2 Castle. The murder is of a gossip columnist, which ends up being a triple murder/suicide. There’s some nice twists and turns in the plot, and the outcome didn’t really become obvious until nearly the end. It was plotted much more evenly as well; it was more character- and plot-driven, and relied less on the reader knowing the background of the show. This is a book I could see non-Castle fans picking up and actually liking on its own terms. That’s not to say there isn’t the jabs and in-jokes (in fact, what made me laugh the hardest was the moonlighting profession they assigned to Jameson Rook. Too, too perfect).

Additionally, it’s much less about wish-fulfillment on the part of Castle, the character, and more about getting the story across. In other words, Nikki comes off as more of a real character this time — she’s smart and resourceful (and remember that episode where Castle has Alexis duct tape him to the chair? That’s important.) and while she does a lot of saving Castle’s butt (coming to his rescue at least twice), they’re also working more as a team than they did in the first book. The sex is dialed way back (though there is a couple of scenes; they are just briefer and less “steamy”), and it’s more about building an actual relationship between the two characters.

So, the discussion I ended up in with Hubby was about whether or not there will be more. On the show, they’ve kind of abandoned Castle’s premise for following Beckett around, and — if I remember right — he’s not done much writing this season. So, is ABC going to keep churning out the Nikki Heat books if there’s no reference to them in the show? Hubby seems to think that they could put out as many as they like independent of the TV show, but I think that the books lose much of their charm if you divorce them from the fun of the weekly episodes. Either way, I’ll probably keep reading them until they stop being brain candy.

Heat Wave

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by Richard Castle
ages: adult
First sentence: “It was always the same for her when she arrived to meet the body.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

“Oh, Melissa,” you say. “We know that you are really eclectic in your reading. But, a book written by the main character of a TV show. Really? Isn’t that a bit meta for your tastes?”

Yes. Yes, it is. And yet, it sat out there in cyberspace, it’s sultry cover calling to me, piquing my interest. Eventually, I had to cave in.

“Yes, but it can’t have been a good book. It’s written by a fictional person!”

Well, it wasn’t fine literature, that’s true. And I’m not sure it wasn’t even a good mystery, since I called it about halfway through. It did feel pretty pedestrian as far as books go. But, it was fun, and that’s all I was expecting. I’m guessing the screenwriters wrote it, by the way.

“What makes you say that? Nathan Fillion’s headshot’s on the back cover… they went pretty far keeping the illusion that Richard Castle ‘wrote’ the book.”

I know! And that’s one of the things I liked (besides Nathan Fillion’s headshot on the back cover). It really was an in-joke kind of things for fans of the series. Scenes in the book that were lifted straight from episodes; in many ways it was a mash-up of Castle, season one. Aside from Nikki Heat thoroughly beating up a bad guy while buck naked, of course. (Though honestly, I wouldn’t mind seeing Stana Katic pull that off…)

“So, if it’s just a bunch of scenes from episodes thrown together by the screenwriters, is there even a plot?”

Yes, it does have a plot. Nikki Heat is a NYPD detective and the latest murder is millionaire developer Matthew Starr. Jameson Rook is a celebrity journalist following Nikki around to get background for an article he’s writing. As they investigate Starr’s murder, things unravel about his background, his wife, and his business, centering in on the $60 million art collection in his house. Of course, lives are put on the line, banter is had, and sparks fly. It’s not as fun as the show, and I got annoyed with a few things — like calling Detectives Raley and Ochoa “Roach” — but mostly, it’s was just fluffy fun.

“Even if it is fun, why should we, who don’t really watch Castle or follow Nathan Fillion obsessively on Twitter, read it?”

My response: Why aren’t you? It’s quite fun as TV goes. Great writing, pretty good stories, it’s some serious fun. Seriously, though, if you’re not a fan of the show, I really don’t know why you’d pick up the book. Unless you really, really like mysteries and will read just about anything. But, if you’re a fan (or even if you only just watch the show), it’s a quick, fun, fluffy read.

“*sigh* That means you’re going to read the sequel, doesn’t it?”

Yep. It does.

Chasing Vermeer

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I kind of liked this little mystery book by Blue Balliett. The only problem was that I often felt like I was missing something. Maybe it’s because the ending caught me completely by surprise, though all the clues were there (in that case, I really was missing something). Maybe it’s because I just don’t put things together well (the whole book was about putting things together well). Maybe it’s one of those adult/kid things (M really liked the book).

The basic premise: a Vermeer painting — A Lady Writing — has been stolen. Demands that Vermeer’s paintings be reassessed have been issued as a ransom. Two sixth grade students — Calder and Petra — start looking at information in new and unique ways, taking no coincidence for granted, and solve the mystery finding the painting and catching the thief in the end.

Now that I write that out, maybe it’s just too unbelievable to make for a good story for an adult. I mean, really, could two 11-almost-12 year olds put all this together? Probably not, but I guess it’s kind of fun to think so. At least for the kids reading it. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be the big hero and solve the big mystery and get their names in lights (there was a nice bit about just that in the book)? So, call it an escapist-fantasy-mystery book. Great for 10-12 year olds. Probably a bit much for their parents.