Who is the Real Richard Castle?

OK, I’m hooked on another detective show. This time it’s Castle. I didn’t pay a lot of mind to it when it first came out, but now that it’s available on Amazon Prime, I’m already half-way through Season 2.

The premise is Law & Order meets Who’s the Boss. Richard Castle is a mystery crime novelist who uses his influence with the NYC mayor to shadow Detective Beckett, his new muse and influence for his book series, the Nikki Heat books. Early on we understand that there is some chemistry between the two, but foreplay is the forte of these screen writers so thus far there is no dating (or anything else) going on (remember, I’m only half-way through Season 2). Castle soon becomes an integral part of the homicide team and his books have become very popular with fans ensuring that he will stick to Beckett at least until the money runs dry.

Pretty cool. The show has a nice back story for Rick Castle. His first novel was published when he was in college and he was awarded the Nom DePlume Society’s prestigious Tom Straw Award for mystery fiction. Castle lives with his daughter and mother in Manhattan and has his first rejection letter framed over his desk as a reminder to never take “no” for an answer.

Beckett also has a good back story behind her. Her mother was brutally murdered when she was a kid and she became a homicide detective in order to investigate and capture her mother’s killer. The work was brutal and the final conclusion of her first investigation was a random act of violence. Beckett almost broke, but her experience made her a hardened cop and an ace homicide detective.

Got your attention? Now comes the fun part. Turns out Richard Castle is now actually publishing books – and they are popular. In September 2009 Heat Wave, the first in the Nikki Heat Series, was released to become #26 on the New York Times Bestseller List.  Then in September of 2010 the second book, Naked Heat was released to #7 on the bestseller list. Richard Castle has now released four novels all of which are mentioned and plot details are revealed on the show. The author bio in the books is that of the fictional character Richard Castle and the picture of the author is none other than Nathan Fillion (who plays Castle in the show). Even Good Reads lists the fictional Richard Castle baring Fillion’s face as the author of the books. Fillion also shows up to the book signings, though he states that he is not pretending to be Richard Castle at these appearances.

So if Nathan Fillion isn’t writing these novels, who is? All ABC and Hyperion (the publisher) will divulge is that the author has made at least one appearance on the show.

Think that solves it? Well, consider that James Patterson, Michael Connelly, Steve Connell and Tom Straw have all made appearances on the show at one time or another (Castle likes to host poker games with his famous author friends). That’s to say if the writer of the books is an already recognized author to begin with.

Most speculate that  Tom Straw is the mysterious author who writes the novels on behalf of ABC and Hyperion. He’s already a recognized author in the genre and his style of writing is very similar to that of the Castle mysteries. Whoever it is, I hope that ABC is giving them a big chunk of change for not taking credit for these books that seem to be taking the mystery genre by storm.

As for the rest of us… there’s a mystery out there to be solved….

Richard Castle wasn’t the only fictional TV character to have a series of books. Can you name the 1990’s TV show that features a fictional character that now authors books for mystery readers?