Review: Driving Heat

Driving Heat by Richard Castle
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Apparently it's getting more and more difficult to get these books out in time (with the TV series, I guess that's where the pressure comes from). This is easy to spot, and could probably even be quantified by the increasing number of sloppy writing and spelling mistakes. I even photographed my two "favourites": "It's like your reading my mind," (seriously??) and "There's plenty off pissed-off people" (also, seriously??).

The story is practically the same as before in Raging Heat: Nikki suspects a high-ranking member of society, but can't do her job properly due to political obstacles and lowly criminals that add some confusion to the case. Difference is, she's a Captain now and also has to deal with administrative tasks, which get loosely and unspiritedly strewn into the story at random, nonsensical intervals.
Nikki Heat herself seems to have somewhat recovered since the last book. She's not an emotional wreck anymore, but there's still some turmoil left, and she's still acting irrational. God, I miss the strong, compartmentalising Heat!

Last, but not least, Yardley Bell, Rook's ex, is back! And... She's totally different from her previous appearance, or is that just me? I remembered her as an intelligent, good looking and hard working agent. Now she's quirky and always smiling? Huh, maybe I remember her wrong...

Anyway, I'm not sure if I didn't enjoy Driving Heat because of the lack of proofreading and therefore also disliked the story, or if the stories are really getting worse. In the first books, the cases were a lot less spectacular, but also a lot more interesting.

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