Vanity Fair blogger James Wolcott is "the partial model for the loathed and despised book critic whose ghastly corpse washes ashore" in "Cathleen Schine's serialized murder mystery in The New York Times Magazine." [WWD]

Interested in turning your world from "blasé to rosé"? The New Yorkers by Cathleen Schine, featured in today's Times Book Review, chronicles the lives of some pretty lonely folk—lonely, that is, until they are rescued from anomie by some heroic canines. No simple matter of dog being (wo)man's best friend, apparently this creatively titled text establishes a rigorous mathematical framework for evaluating personhood based on doghood. Skeptical? Let's go to the evidence!