Castle Still - H 2015
Adam Larkey/ABC“Rumors of Rick Castle’s demise have been greatly exaggerated,” says Wendy Lefkon, editorial director at Disney Publishing Worldwide imprint Kingswell.
ABC’s Castle series, starring Nathan Fillion as the eponymous hero, may have just been canceled after eight seasons, but the character of Richard Castle will live on as the author of at least two more books, promises Lefkon.
First up is High Heat, which is set for publication Oct. 25. This story starts with a video of the beheading of a New York journalist by an ISIS-like group operating in the city. The terrorists then set their sights on NYPD detective Heat’s husband, magazine writer Jameson Rook and the subject of his next big profile, the independent presidential candidate Legs Kline. (THR has an exclusive reveal of the cover and an excerpt of chapter one below).
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High Heat is the eighth Richard Castle/Nikki Heat novel. The ninth, Heat Storm, is scheduled for spring 2017. Heat Wave, the first of the series, came out in September 2009, six months after the show’s debut. All seven previous Castle novels have made The New York Times best-seller list.
From the beginning, ABC has embraced the fiction that the author of the fictional Nikki Heat books is the fictional Richard Castle, even going so far as to put a picture of Nathan Fillion (as Castle) on the back.
When asked about it in 2009 by Entertainment Weekly, Castle creator Andrew Marlowe said, “Richard Castle [is the writer]. The roguishly handsome best-selling author of the Derek Storm mystery series. He’s charming. He’s a good writer. And I don’t know why you’re trying to take credit away from him. The guy worked hard on it.”
A little Internet sleuthing suggests mystery writer Tom Straw might be the pen behind the Richard Castle nom de plume. Castle fans seem happy to embrace the idea that the books are indeed by Richard Castle and with the TV show going off the air, the books are where it is at now.
Read chapter one of High Heat below.
‘High Heat’ Ch. 1 Excerpt by Richard Castle by The Hollywood Reporter
