Heat Wave

Richard Castle’s contemporary crime fiction Heat Wave (2009) is the first title in the Nikki Heat series, a tie-in product for the ABC network show Castle. In the show, Richard Castle is an author who partners with detective Kate Beckett to do research for his books. He pens the Nikki Heat series after being inspired by Beckett. While the books are marketed as being written by the character Richard Castle, they are actually ghostwritten by Tom Straw, a New York Times bestselling author of mystery novels.

Detective Nikki Heat exits her car into the 100-degree New York City summer and makes her way to the crime scene she has been called to investigate. The sidewalk is adorned with the pulverized remains of a man. Witnesses say he fell from one of the upper floors of the swanky apartment building. Just then, Jameson Rook, a handsome and cocky magazine journalist, arrives, making a joke about how "it's raining men, hallelujah." Rook has an agreement with the NYPD. He is allowed to follow Heat and her squad so that he can research his next article, but he must never interfere with their work. However, as Rook's enthusiastic fans get in their way, begging for his autograph, she doubts he does anything but interfere.

According to the doorman, the victim lived on the building's sixth floor. Heat and her team go to the apartment to investigate. The victim is Matthew Starr, a successful real estate developer; his widow, Kimberly, a much younger woman, insists he would never kill himself. After she leaves the apartment, the team finds evidence of a struggle, along with a scrap of denim fabric on the railing where Starr fell. Since he was not wearing denim, the team believes he was pushed.



As they leave the apartment building, they hear a scream. A man in denim jeans is assaulting Kimberly. Despite Heat telling Rook to stay behind, he joins her in the chase. They catch and arrest the man. Although his denim pants do not match the sample from the railing, he admits to having an affair with Kimberly. The team investigates her, learning that she is an exotic dancer turned trophy wife who had one other rich husband before Starr. He died of natural causes.

As Heat and Rook investigate various other leads, Heat is a bit jealous of Rook’s many beautiful fans, though she insists to herself that she is not attracted to Rook. They learn that Starr was broke due to his ill-managed business and fondness for gambling and prostitutes. It is also revealed that Heat's mother was murdered when Heat was nineteen years old; the trauma of the incident turned her to a career in law enforcement.

Eventually, the team arrests one of Starr's bookies and an additional man, Pochenko, who looks to be hired muscle. Heat does not get much info out of the men during the interrogation, but when Pochenko makes a lewd comment to Heat, Rook can be heard shouting angrily from behind the room's two-way mirror. When the men are leaving the police station after their release, Pochenko tells Heat that he "will have her."



That night, Pochenko breaks into Heat's apartment and assaults her, but she fights him off by pressing a hot clothing iron to his face. He escapes, and by the next day, the police still have not found him. Knowing Pochenko is still at large, Rook is unwilling to leave Heat alone. He walks her home that night, and they end up having sex. Heat decides that she likes Rook because he is playful, which, in turn, helps her to be playful. Nevertheless, her guard is back up the next day, and she gives a cold shoulder to his continued attempts at a relationship.
Soon, they learn that the Starr apartment has been robbed of $60 million worth of artwork. They get a lead on a moving truck and raid the building, but do not find any trace of the stolen art. Worse still, Rook once again gets in the way during the raid, leaving Heat furious with him.

Eventually, they receive a good piece of news: the denim fabric from the railing matches the pants worn by Pochenko when he was arrested. The man himself has also been found with a bullet hole in the back of his head. In addition, another body has been discovered, this time a woman who worked as an art dealer. According to pictures on her camera, she had gone to appraise the Starr collection on the same morning that Starr was murdered. She was later murdered by Pochenko to cover the truth of what she had found: the Starr collection is full of forgeries.

Heat and the team follow their leads to the only people who could have replaced the collection with forgeries without Starr noticing. First, they turn to Kimberly, but she had no idea they were forgeries. In fact, she was responsible for stealing the art. She had been attempting to sell it to fund her lifestyle. In the end, the only one left with both the means to pull it off and the access to the apartment that the job required is Noah Paxton, Starr's trusted accountant.



When they apprehend Paxton, he is intending to kill Kimberly, but instead takes Rook as a hostage. When Rook learns that Paxton sent Pochenko to kill Heat, he flies into a rage and knocks him down. Heat then shoots Paxton in the shoulder to stop him from shooting Rook.

As Heat drops Rook off at his apartment that night, Rook attempts to talk to her about how their work relationship is going to work. Instead, she kisses him, and he invites her up to his apartment.