Jackie Walsh, a teacher of film studies at Rodgers University, and her crime-solving dog, Jake, investigate the murder of Mannheim Goodwillie, one of Palmer's most prominent citizens, who drops dead during a live radio broadcast ( )

Honestly, I would say this is not really worth bothering with. I found the prose clunky and overly cute, and the solution to the mystery involved several dei ex machina, not anything that could be figured out. There was an awful lot of info-dumping, as well. The characters never took life, and the setting was absurdly artificial. I also felt that everyone in the book was a pastiche on a real figure, which gets old fast.

What pushed me over the edge from "meh" to outright dislike was a scene where the German Shepherd, Jake (who is only in the book to justify putting "Dog Lover" on the cover and attract the rabid dog-o-phile buyer) tracked a car that had driven away by riding in a second car and sticking his head out the window. He barked Left/Right commands to his owner. In addition, half way through he stopped to eat a very smelly sausage. All this, in a book that was not branded as "urban fantasy" or other genre where magic would make sense. ( )