The television show Castle is entertaining and managed to grow on me after a few episodes. This novel is the book written by the fictional Rick Castle character after his ride-alongs with the fictional Detective Beckett who serves as his inspiration. In this novel a wealthy New York real estate developer is thrown off of a balcony. As Detective Heat and her crew unravel the aspects of the killing they brush against the usual assortment of suspects, the trophy wife, the bookie, the bookie’s muscle, etc.

The meta fiction of the novel is entertaining and it is fun to hear echoes of the episodes in your noggin as you read the prose. But the story itself left me cold. On the show Castle is a bit cheesy but Nathan Fillion infuses the role with wit, charm, and humor. Here the cheese is dialed up to eleven with no performance to carry the material. The prose is entertaining, but it shows the effects of too much research, too much proving he did the homework, in short too much detective slang. I suppose if you consider that the novel was written in character, then that is pardonable, but it might be off-putting to mystery readers who had not seen the show. All in all, it’s a decent novel for something written by a fictional character.

The hard cold professional thief named Parker makes an attempt to pick up and launder the bank money he stashed in “Nobody Runs Forever” and found too hot to recover in “Ask the Parrot”. The third and final part of the story finds Parker at home with Claire as he decides to make a run back into the police roadblocks to pick up the boxes of cash stashed in the abandoned church. Along the way, he gains partner and kills a few people trying to take back what he stole. It is a perfect examination of the nuts and bolts of a life of crime.

The twenty four books in the Parker series show a change in the country and a change in the criminal world. The writing by Richard Stark aka Donald Westlake, is sharp and the plots reflect the tools, the technology and the mood of the time. While Parker had a run from 1962 to 2008, he never changed. Over the course of Richard Stark’s books, Parker the thief became more than a character. He ended his run as an archetype.

Nathan Fillion carries this welcome take on the police proceedural. He plays Rick Castle, a roguish and charming writer who gets pulled into a murder investigation when a killer pulls a murder scene from one of his novels. He finds that he likes the gig and forces his way onto a unit as he gathers research material for a new series of detective novels built around Detective Kate Beckett the lead investigator played by Stana Katic. Sure, there are some cliches here and there, but there is also at least one clever detective/ writer thing per episode.

Like Burn Notice, Leverage, and White Collar on the cable channels, Castle shows an influence of The Rockford Files by Stephen Cannell. He is all over the DVD extras and even makes an onscreen appearance. It is nice to see a bit of humor in the fictional murder business. The audio commentary give a nice insight into the world of television production.

At the beginning of this excellent crime novel, Parker is actually runing uphill from the law dogs that have been chasing him since the authorities found his trail. Helicopters sweep overhead as he keeps moving. Parker and his crew had a bank robbery go bad in the last Parker novel 2004’s Nobody Runs Forever. At the top of the hill, his luck changes when he meets a townie who will help Parker get away if the criminal helps him with a job of his own.

The prose by Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark is sharp and zips right along. Since Parker is the consummate professional and without emotion, the townie gets a lot of time to explain how the owners of the racetrack screwed him over and why he wants revenge on his former employer. He has a simple job planned which is complicated when a pair of local hicks want in on the big payday. The story really shines when Parker has a bad day.

The odd title comes from a silent parrot owned by the townie that bribes Parker into a partnership. Sure enough, there is a chapter from the bird’s point of view when the parrot finally chooses to speak. This is excellent work and Stark is a must read for noir fans.
.

Steve Martin uses this wonderful biography to chart the development of his stand-up routine. It starts with his first job selling guidebooks at Disneyland and ends with him walking away from that life on the road to make The Jerk. He is by turns harsh to the people that never followed through on showbiz promises made and kind to comedy giants such as Johnny Carson and Carl Reiner. His relationship with his Dad and women on the road are a little too intimate for me, but this is a fascinating book.

The wonderful thing for me was discovering the genesis of his act and seriousness required to make it hum. His stories of failed attempts and stumbles are as entertaining as his impressions of Saturday Night Live alum like John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd. His anecdotes and clever approach to being silly really makes me want to go back and listen to that old vinyl. This should be a primer for anyone considering a life in entertainment.
.

Brick is a hard-boiled detective story set in and around a High School. Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) our noir hero of the suburbs is a wiseguy who knows all of the angles and all of the players. When his ex-girlfriend calls him asking him for help, it sets a chain of events in motion that end in murder. There is a load of violence and snappy detective patter. The old school words coming out of the mouths of teens made me laugh. I love Lukas Haas’ Dark Shadows look in the movie. This is a delightful surprise of a whodunit so go find it on DVD.

.

This Spenser novel begins like almost all of the rest. A beautiful woman walks into Spenser’s office and wants to hire him and sleep with him if she gets the chance. It seems a professional horndog has been sleeping with rich married women and now he has started blackmailing them. The angry women have banded together to find him and warn him off. Spenser does that and then there are complications. The mystery rolls along and all of the Spenser cliches are checked off of the list. The story goes through the motions and once the word count is hit, the mystery is solved. I read a friend’s copy so I can sleep well knowing that I did not personally encourage a once- decent writer to hack out padded novellas for quick cash. I think I’m done with these.

.

Daryl Gregory’s first novel is a work of daring and brilliance. The prose is crisp and the observed world around him is well drawn. In the world of Pandemonium, demon possession is common enough to have various strains identified. A pistol-wielding demon named The Truth guns down liars. A shield-slinging hero nicknamed The Captain possesses soldiers in their darkest hours. And a puckish demon named The Hellion possesses little boys and has adventures that are a series of boyish pranks.

In the story, young Del is posessed by a demon when he is five and to his horror, the demon never leaves. Now, Del is in his twenties and the demon has re-awakened. The Hellion wants out so that he can spread his brand of mischief. Del wants him dead. As Del races to find a cure, The Hellion in his head starts throwing up roadblocks including a murder. Pandemonium is a clever and compelling read.

.

Probably the least popular of Jack Kirby’s many creations, Devil Dinosaur is a bit of a punchline. The series deserves it. Make no mistake, these are some weak comics. They are goofy without being funny. If the introduction by Tom Brevoort is accurate, this series was created because there was a bit of interest in turning his Kamandi series from DC into a Saturday Morning Cartoon. Kirby wanted to create something like that for Marvel, so he went back in time instead of forward. It took courage and daring.

Consider the challenges of writing the adventures of a proto-human named Moon Boy and his non-speaking bright red T-Rex-shaped buddy Devil Dinosaur. They fight the big three of 1970’s pop science fiction: spiders, ants and robots. So, Moon Boy narrates their adventures in that Kirby-speak. That is a tall hill to climb and Kirby does his best, but the project seems doomed from the start. It is a failed bold experiment, but I salute the effort.

.

Sturges’ logline for the book is essentially that it is ‘The Dirty Dozen with Elves’ which is a little misleading. Midwinter is an action and adventure story in the time of war placed in a fantasy setting. The story follows the former occupants of a prison across the world as it enters a once-every-hundred-years winter to complete a suicide mission. The characters are sharp and the story really moves. Okay, maybe the logline works.

It unfairly suffers by comparison with its sequel The Office of Shadow which I read in the manuscript stage. While Office of Shadow is great, Midwinter is a good first novel and an interesting window into an alien culture. These books made me rethink what I was writing at the time. For the moment, I can’t think of better praise.

.