Castle and a Cover Contest!

My novel Ring Around the Rosie is in a cover contest! If you think it's the most visually appealing, you should go vote for it!  You can see all the nominees and cast your vote here

Last night's Castle was okay.  It seemed a little forced and I was disappointed after last week's snappy dialogue and solid case.  But it was still good, just not as stellar as I've come to expect this season.

We start out with a lady dressed in an evening gown trying to get buzzed into her building because she's lost her purse with her keys in it.  She's grabbed and found dead the next day.  Espo is actually a fan of Anahita, the murder victim (she's a big telenovella star.)  It's funny because he claims it's his Tia that is the fan, but he just knows so much about the characters and storylines, it's obvious it's really him. (I can't really imagine him sitting down to watch a telenovella, but I digress).

Castle doesn't have any cases and he's bored throwing pencils in the ceiling.  Beckett sees that the murder victim's best friend, Sophia, is distraught since she lent Anahita a clutch purse worth half million dollars and she needs to get it back to the boutique by 5 pm the next day, so she gives her Castle's name as a recommendation.  Castle dives into the lost purse case and of course, it intersects with the murder investigation.  Sort of.  They're going to all the same places to retrace the victim's steps, like finding out she went to the opera and made an exchange in the ladies room of a flash drive.  Beckett goes after the angle of who gave Anahita the flash drive and finds out it was the daughter of a Saudi diplomat.  When she's called in for questioning, she's less than cooperative, however.  So, a dead end. Thankfully, Perlmutter gets a fingerprint off Anahita's neck and it belongs to a gun for hire named Harlan Mathis. They go to bring him in.

Meanwhile, Castle finds out a white stretch limo came to pick up the murder victim, so he figures out who owns it and heads down there.  He sneaks in the garage and slips into a white stretch limo, but doesn't find the purse.  He does get caught, however, and taken for a drive by a man pointing a gun at him.  And hey, he looks like the picture the gang had of Harlan Mathis! Uh oh.  Castle is tied to a chair and being questioned, but the gunman doesn't believe his story and pulls out a knife. Before it gets ugly, Espo and Ryan burst in and save the day.  For which they demand Castle buy them floor seats for services rendered.

Mathis alibis out, but he does say that Anahita didn't have a purse in the limo. Castle goes back to the drawing board and the opera house where he finds the purse in a bush.  He takes it back to his office and realizes it's a cheap knockoff, just as Sophia comes in and demands the flash drive.  At gunpoint. Castle wrestles the gun away and is quite proud of himself until Espo informs him the gun was a prop and besides, the lady is maybe 110 pounds. The gang finds out that the flash drive connects to a Swiss banking account with 100 million dollars in it.  Once they question her about it, they find out that Anahita and Sophia were going to start their own network and the Saudi diplomat's daughter was investing in it.  But then who killed Anahita?  The only time they talked about their plans was in Sophia's trailer.

The gang finds listening devices in the trailer that lead back to the manager of the telenovella that we met at the beginning when they were questioning Anahita's co-workers.  He'd made them stars and couldn't bear to see them leave him high and dry.

We end with Espo getting an autograph from Sophia for his "Tia" whose name is Javier. haha. He's totally starstruck and that was cute.

So, like I said at the beginning, it was an okay episode.  I liked it well enough, but it won't go on my favorites list if you get my meaning.  The preview for two weeks from now looks good, though. I'm excited for that one!

Did you see it? What did you think?