When New York's most vicious gossip columnist, Cassidy Towne, is found dead, NYPD Homicide Detective Heat uncovers a gallery of high profile suspects, all with compelling motives for killing the most feared muckraker in Manhattan. Heat's murder investigation is complicated by her surprise reunion with superstar magazine journalist Jameson Rook.

NYPD Homicide Detective Nikki Heat arrives at her latest crime scene to find an unidentified woman stabbed to death and stuffed inside a suitcase left on a Manhattan street. Nikki is in for a big shock when this new homicide connects to the unsolved murder of her own mother.

In New York Times bestselling author Richard Castle's newest novel, an illegal immigrant falls from the sky and NYPD Homicide detective Nikki Heat's investigation into his death quickly captures the imagination of her boyfriend, the Pulitzer Prize - winning journalist Jameson Rook. When he decides to work the case with Heat for his next big story, Nikki is at first happy to have him ride along. Yes, she must endure Rook's usual wild conspiracy speculations...

"An ISIS-style beheading of a journalist, carried out by a New York City group pledging fealty to that rogue state, becomes more than just another case for NYPD Captain Nikki Heat when the killers announce their next target: her husband, magazine writer Jameson Rook. Meanwhile, Heat is haunted by a fleeting glimpse of someone she swears is her mother... a woman who has been dead for nearly twenty years" -- provided by publisher.

New York Police Captain Nikki Heat is accustomed to dealing with murders, even those with no leads and no motives. But having her husband as a suspect makes her newest case the most personal one yet. Nikki Heat does not like to be away from her husband, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jameson Rook. But when Rook is given the honor to be a visiting professor at his alma mater, he can't pass up the opportunity to mentor burgeoning journalists at his...