Plot

A ritualistic killer is on the loose while Castle's first ex-wife and Alexis's mom, Meredith visits.

Richard Castle thinks a murder is a vodun ritualistic murder when a metallic disk is found in the mouth of an adult male murder victim. When other deaths pop up, including a young girl, killed in the same manner, it's up to the team to find the connection.—lemoviecritic@yahoo.com

When a man is found murdered in a voodoo ritual, Castle, Beckett and her team investigate the case. They find a small sac with a disk in his mouth and soon they locate his illegal Nigerian friends living in a shed in a building. His best friend is arrested as suspect but a woman is found dead in the same MO and he discloses the name of the killer. Now the detectives and Castle look for a connection between the victims. Meanwhile, Castle's ex-wife Meredith visits her daughter Alexis and Castle and expects to move from Los Angeles to New York to be close to Alexis.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Castle has sex again with his first ex-wife, Alexis' mother, Meredith, who announces, to their horror, she's moving from Hollywood, where her career has slumped, to New York. Even so distracted, Castle identifies the ritual multiple stabbings of, first, illegal Nigerian Charlie Logan and, then, Asian lawyer Michelle. The MO is conform as a vodun invocation of the God of lost and found. The link is found in illegal immigration and counterfeited luxury items. Those meet in missing smuggler, Charles Oni, but tracking him down proves extremely dangerous.—KGF Vissers

Castle recognizes that a Black male murder victim, who appears to have fallen off the grid, has been subjected to a Vodun ritual similar to one he once wrote about in his novel HOLY STORM. When Detective Beckett asks to see his research, Castle first tries to pass off reading to her from HOLY STORM as "research" - then introduces her to the Vodun practitioner friend who helped him with his research, a college-educated Nigerian Restaurant owner. When a second victim, a non-Black woman lawyer, is found dead by the same ritual, the case takes a more complicated turn. Beckett uncovers that the murder victim was a Nigerian student who had been working for a notorious Nigerian slumlord and businessman who has gone missing.

Meanwhile, Castle's first ex-wife, Meredith, a Hollywood actress described as "Auntie Mame on Meth", has blown back into New York City. After having wild sex with her ex-husband, she informs him she intends to move back permanently; and back into his and their daughter Alexis's lives. Nobody in the Castle household is happy about this development, including Alexis, who finds her mother to be a disruptive influence in her life, and Castle's mother, Martha, who sees in Meredith a younger and very unflattering mirror image. When Castle complains about Meredith to Beckett, she is highly unsympathetic when he describes her as his "deep-fried Twinkie" (something that's great once in a while, but you wouldn't want to have on a daily basis) and points out that he can't help but have sex with her because "The thing with crazy people is, the sex is terrific!"