{"id":35,"date":"2008-02-16T20:33:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-16T20:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookblog.salticid.com\/?p=35"},"modified":"2008-02-16T20:33:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-16T20:33:00","slug":"play-dead-david-rosenfelt-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2008\/02\/play-dead-david-rosenfelt-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Play Dead &#8211; David Rosenfelt, 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=wwwsalticidco-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=as1&amp;asins=0446582417&amp;fc1=000000&amp;IS2=1&amp;lt1=_blank&amp;m=amazon&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;bc1=000000&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;float:left;padding:4px\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe> Oh, how I wanted to love this mystery, centering on a golden retriever who &#8220;testifies&#8221; in court to get his owner out of jail&#8211;in a completely realistic and believable way (ie no Lillian Jackson Braun-style anthropomorphization). It had great reviews so I ordered it for the library and put it on hold for myself; there was a hitch in the ordering so anticipation built for much longer than usual. And&#8230; it&#8217;s fine, no more. Lawyer Andy Carpenter, the narrator, has a not-particularly-funny wisecrack for every occasion. The story is told in present tense&#8211;bleurgh&#8211;is that popular simply because it allows authors to avoid the pluperfect? I&#8217;ve seldom\/never found it to be anything but annoying as a technique. The solution was a little deus-ex-machina, especially because the dog, crucial in the beginning, is shuffled off to the side by the end. The golden rescue operation in the book is based on the author&#8217;s real-life Tara Foundation, but it&#8217;s only mentioned in passing. I would have loved more dog detail instead of rote courtroom scenes!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oh, how I wanted to love this mystery, centering on a golden retriever who &#8220;testifies&#8221; in court to get his owner out of jail&#8211;in a completely realistic and believable way (ie no Lillian Jackson Braun-style anthropomorphization). It had great reviews so I ordered it for the library and put it on hold for myself; there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}