"Heat Wave"

So, for at least a two months, I've been really craving a good mystery-with-romance subplot, which is why I decided to slip the Castle tie-in novel into my order when I spent a gift card that I've had for a while. It was totally not a book I would have spent my own money on and I figured that it would be kind of trashy but fun.

I figured wrong.

I literally did not finish the first page before thinking, ohhhhhh, ghost writer has MASSIVE WRITING CHOPS.

It was like Ed McBain had done a rewrite of the Eve Dallas series. Sure, "Richard Castle" is working with several heavily-used mystery tropes, but he/she is doing so with skill and verve. The mystery is interesting and unexpected, the humor is black, the banter is tight, Nikki Heat is AWESOMECAKES, New York and the weather is practically a character, Jamison Rook is clearly playing second fiddle to Detective Heat, and the pre-sex scene? Smokin'.

( Spoiler: trigger warning )

Which is to say, I'm totally ordering the sequel. In hardcover, so I get a picture of Nathan Fillion on the back.

Nothing Like The Taste Of Irony At 3 a.m.

What struck me most about this interview from March with the Arizona congresswoman who was shot was not the bitter irony of her discussing the dangers of the violent rhetoric currently de rigueur in American politics but how reasonable and rational she is, how she refuses to assign blame or point fingers, how she's enthralled with the idea of democracy, how she seems to be exactly the kind of woman I'd want helping form policy in my country.

Bang.