TV Tie-In Novels (Final Part)

Over the last couple of weeks, I have focused on “tie-in novels” for the following TV shows: Smallville, Everwood, Alias, Glee, Greek, Charmed, Supernatural and Lost. This week’s final column in this article series will discuss the “tie-in novels” for Burn Notice, Psych, Castle and the reimagined series Battlestar Galactica.

First up is the popular USA Network series Burn Notice, which stars Jeffrey Donovan as covert-operations agent Michael Weston who is “burned” on a mission in Nigeria, waking up back in Miami, Florida where he is left with no prior work history, no money and no support system; basically he has no identity – that’s the life of a burned spy.

Working with his old friend (and former military man) Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell) and an ex-girlfriend Fiona Glenanne (Gabrielle Anwar) he battles criminal figures, con artist, arms traffickers and more while trying to deal with problems at home with his mother Madeline (Sharon Gless) and getting back his life in the spy trade. In the show’s fourth season, Michael inadvertently burned counterintelligence expert Jesse Porter (Coby Bell), who joined the team in their battles.

Burn Notice

The series was created by Matt Nix and debuted on the USA Network on June 28, 2007. It was recently renewed for two more seasons with its current season (the show’s fifth) set to return on June 23, 2011. The show has aired 62 episodes to date.

In 2008, Signet Books published several “tie-in novels” for the show under their Obsidian division all written by Tod Goldberg:

The Fix, published in August of 2008
The End Game, published in May of 2009
The Giveaway, published in July of 2010
The Reformed, published in January of 2011

The latest book entitled The Bad Beat will be on bookshelves in July of this year.

You can learn more about the USA Network series Burn Notice here.

Another popular USA Network series is Psych, which was created by Steve Franks. It stars James Roday as Shawn Spencer, a young crime consultant for the Santa Barbara Police Department whose heightened observational skills (grilled into him from a young age by his police officer father portrayed by actor Corbin Bernsen) and impressive detective instincts allow him to convince people that he solves cases with psychic abilities. His partner in this ruse, who is actually a pharmaceutical sales representative, working Shawn to solve crimes in his spare time, is Burton “Gus” Guster (Dule Hill). The cast also includes Timothy Omundson as Detective Lassiter, Maggie Lawson as Lassiter’s partner Detective Juliet O’Hara and Kirsten Nelson as Chief Karen Vick.

The show debuted on Friday, July 7, 2006 and will return for its sixth season sometime this fall; to date the show has aired 79 episodes.

Psych

The “tie-in novels” for Psych – like the novels for Burn Notice – have been published by Signet and were written by William Rabkin. They were released starting in January of 2009 through February of this year and include the following:

A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read (January 2009)
Mind Over Magic (July 2009)
The Call of the Mild (Jan. 2010)
A Fatal Frame of Mind (August 2010)
Mind-Altering Murder (February 2011)

To learn more about the TV series Psych, please visit here.

Then there is the ABC comedy-drama Castle which premiered on March 9, 2009 and is currently in its third season (with a renewal for a fourth announced this past January). The show has aired approximately 55 episodes to date (and counting).

The show was created by Andrew W. Malone and in the pilot episode the story follows the life of famous mystery novelist Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion), who has killed off his main character in his book series and has writer’s block. He is called in to help the NYPD solve a copy-cat murder based on one of his novels and discovers Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) on the case. He develops a deep interest in Beckett, making her his muse for a new series of books, focusing on the life his new fictional heroine Detective Nikki Heat. Castle uses his connection with the mayor’s office to accompany Beckett on her investigations. The other officers in her unit include Detective Javier Esposito (Jon Huertas), Detective Kevin Ryan (Seamus Dever) and Captain Roy Montgomery (Ruben Santiago-Hudson). On the home front there is Castle’s actress-mother Martha Rodgers (Susan Sullivan) and Castle’s teenaged daughter Alexis (Molly Quinn).

Castle

Unlike the other shows included in this article series, the “tie-in novels” for Castle are slightly different. Rather than have authors write stories about the characters contained within the show, ABC has actually published the Nikki Heat books written by Richard Castle. Those books include:

Heat Wave, published in September of 2009
Naked Heat, published in September of 2010

And, the latest book in the series Heat Rises will be released this September.

Visit here to learn more about the TV show Castle.

Lastly, there is the reimagined TV series Battlestar Galactica (based on the classic 1970’s series) that aired on the then monikered Sci-Fi Channel (now known simply as Syfy). Brought back to the small screen by Ron Moore and David Eick, the series actually started out as a three-hour mini-series that aired on December 8, 2003. It became the third-most-watched program in the network’s history (up to that point). It returned as a weekly TV series starting on October 8, 2004, running for 4 seasons and 75 episodes. The series aired its finale on March 24, 2009.

The story arc of this version of BSG (as the show was known to its fans) chronicled the story of a civilization of humans who live on a series of planets known as the Twelve Colonies until they are by a cybernetic attacked race known as the Cylons, sending approximately 50,000 survivors on the run out into space in any type of vessel available to them, including the last remaining military ship of the Colonial Fleet – the Battlestar Galactica. The over-riding goal of the survivors is to one day discover the 13th Colony known as Earth.

Included in the cast were well-known actors Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell as military leader William Adama and Secretary of Education Laura Roslin, who ends up being the highest ranking government official left alive after the Cylon attack, putting her in line to be the President of the survivors. The rest of the cast included mostly unknown actors (at the time) such as Katee Sackhoff, Jamie Bamber, James Callis, Tricia Helfer, Grace Park, Tahmoh Penikett, Michael Hogan, Aaron Douglas, Alessandro Juliani, Michael Trucco and Kandyse McClure.

Battlestar Galactica

Fourteen “tie-in novels” were published by Berkley Publishing and ACE Publishing for the original 1970’s series (most of them being written by Robert Thurston with a few written by Nicholas Yermakov and Ron Goulart and one by Michael Resnick). There have also been numerous books written by actor Richard Hatch, who portrayed Lee “Apollo” Adama in the original series. As for the “tie-in novels” for the new reimagined series were published by Tor Science Fiction and include the following:

Battlestar Galactica by Jeffrey A. Carver
The Cylon’s Secret by Craig Shaw Gardner
Sagittarius Is Bleeding by Peter David
Unity by Steven Harper

You can learn about the long history of Battlestar Galactica here and here.

And so ends this three week adventure into the world of “tie-in novels”. But I should preface that statement with this: the books featured in the last three columns are by far not the only novels based on characters and stories within popular TV shows. There are others.

So I have to ask: are there other TV shows for which you know that have “tie-in novels”? Do you have a favorite series that has been made into books that wasn’t featured in these columns? If so, please share as I would love to hear about them.