These days it is common to see a video game based on a Hollywood movie or find novels based on popular television series. Except for teenagers and the most ardent of fans, I doubt many people actually pay much attention to such tie-ins and gimmickry.

One television show, however, has taken this gimmick to a whole new level. And its actually attracted my interest. The television show is non other than Castle. Castle is a comedy-crime series starring Nathon Fillion (Firefly, Doctor Horrible's Singalong Blog) as Richard Castle, a famous mystery novelist who has found inspiration for his next great book in NYPD detective Kate Beckett, played by Stana Katic. In the television series, we follow Richard Castle and Kate Beckett as they jointly solve murders while Castle writes his next book, "Heat Wave" with Beckett as the inspiration behind lead character, "Nikki Heat".

During the hiatus between seasons 1 and 2, Richard Castle's the mystery thriller novel, Heat Wave has been published in the real world. Yes, you can actually get the novel from Amazon, Borders or any local bookstore. Yes, the author is supposedly Richard Castle and according to book reviews I have read, Heat Wave feels very much as if it had been written by Richard Castle. While the novel's plot is new, it incorporates many elements from in the television series, as if Richard Castle had really drawn inspiration from his time with detective Beckett.


This is all nice and fine, but the producers of Castle went one step further. Season 2 of Castle starts with the launch of Heat Wave. In one episode, Castle's character mentioned that the novel has a sex scene on page 105. There really is a sex scene starting on page 105 in Heat Wave. In the latest episode, a serial killer obsessed with Heat Wave's lead character Nikki Heat and her muse Kate Beckett, used a number code that had to be decoded using words in the novel itself. I'm pretty sure that some avid watcher will soon verify that the numbers on the television screen will actually match words in the novel.

All this has piqued my interest in Heat Wave and I will probably be dropping by a bookstore sometime soon. I am sure Castle fans would be pouring over the book too, what a great way to get people reading again!