Review: Castle

Castle is an American television show on the ABC network. It is a cross between a comedy and drama, as it follows three detectives in New York City and their writer-partner who accompanies them on cases, trying to get ideas for his crime novels. The episodes are often funny with dramatic twists as the team works together to solve murders and mysteries throughout New York City.

Castle is the story of Richard Castle, played by Nathan Fillion. Castle is a best-selling author who lives with his mother, Martha Rogers - played by Susan Sullivan - and his daughter, Alexis - played by Molly Quinn. They live a posh life in a penthouse apartment in New York City. Castle is known for his crime novels.

He plays card games with other great crime novelists of our time, and they discuss plot lines and murder cases. He finds himself with a case of writer's block and finagles his way into a police precinct in New York, where he meets Detective Kate Beckett - played by Stana Katic - as well as Detectives Javier Esposito (Jon Huertas), Kevin Ryan (Seamus Dever).

Castle's friendship with the mayor of New York gets him a ride-along that soon turns into a full-fledged partnership with Beckett, and she becomes the inspiration for his next best-selling heroine, Nikki Heat.

Beckett is annoyed with Castle's presence. She is a serious detective driven into the profession as her mother was murdered when she was young, and she wants to find her killer. This becomes a storyline that is threaded through all four seasons, as we sometimes see Beckett getting closer and closer to her mother's killer, only to be thrown off track again.

In between this storyline, Beckett and Castle, whom she becomes quite attached to, along with Esposito and Ryan, solve different murders every week. Castle is known for his harebrained, sometimes wacky theories about who the murderer is, and he's right about as much as he's wrong.

However, having a writer on their team proves to be beneficial, because he usually sees something that they don't. As you might expect, Castle and Beckett dance around a romantic interest, but as yet they have not acted on it.

Part of the marketing strategy for Castle is to create the personae of Richard Castle and for him to have a presence in the world. "Richard Castle" has released three books since the show started titled Heat Wave, Naked Heat, and Heat Rises, released in 2009, 2010, and 2011 respectively.

The novels are ghostwritten, or written by someone pretending to be Richard Castle, but have been an immense success. Heat Wave debuted at number 26 on the New York Times Best Seller list, and Naked Heat debuted at number 7.

The novels are written in character from cover to cover; even the dedications and acknowledgments are what we would expect to see from Richard Castle as we see him on television. Castle, however, is a fictional character, and the books are strictly promotional tools.

There is also a graphic novel that was released in 2011 called Castle: Richard Castle's Deadly Storm. All of these books were mentioned in the television show and used as promotional tools for the seasons during which they were released.

Richard Castle also has a website, complete with a blog and a Twitter account. These pages stay completely in character, and often reference what happened on the latest episode of the show.