Jenn's Review: Storm Front

Author: Richard Castle
Series: Derrick Storm #1
Publication Date: April 30, 2013
Publisher: Voice
Pages: 314
Obtained: purchased
Genre:  Crime
Rating: 3.75
Bottom Line: Light spy read
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Library

Blurb: There's a storm front coming!

Four years after he was presumed dead, Derrick Storm--the man who made Richard Castle a perennial bestseller--is back in this rip-roaring, full-length thriller.

From Tokyo, to London, to Johannesburg, high-level bankers are being gruesomely tortured and murdered. The killer, caught in a fleeting glimpse on a surveillance camera, has been described as a psychopath with an eye patch. And that means Gregor Volkov, Derrick Storm's old nemesis, has returned. Desperate to figure out who Volkov is working for and why, the CIA calls on the one man who can match Volkov's strength and cunning--Derrick Storm.

With the help of a beautiful and mysterious foreign agent--with whom Storm is becoming romantically and professionally entangled--he discovers that Volkov's treachery has embroiled a wealthy hedge-fund manager and a U.S. senator. In a heated race against time, Storm chases Volkov's shadow from Paris, to the lair of a computer genius in Iowa, to the streets of Manhattan, then through a bullet-riddled car chase on the New Jersey Turnpike. In the process, Storm uncovers a plot that could destroy the global economy--unleashing untold chaos--which only he can stop.

Review:  In the world of Castle, we know that his Derrick Storm books made him famous, but the ABC franchise up to this point has only visited it in graphic novels and short stories.  Storm Front is the first full length novel.

With the Nikki Heat novels there are stories within stories as "Richard Castle" draws on his experiences with Beckett, giving the plots a familiarity and odd sense of deja vu.  For Derrick Storm there isn't anything else to draw from... so with the exception of a few ruggedly handsome references and a brief run-in with the 12th Precinct's Heat and Rook, it stands on it's own. I was in no hurry to solve the mystery, but even so I had no idea where it was going. The twist wasn't huge but it was completely perspective altering.

While I don't think this will win any awards, I do think it is a fun addition to the Castle transmedia collection. It also makes for a great summer read.

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