My book club scoffed at the premise of this story: A linguistics professor tries to teach his dog, the only witness to his wife's death, to speak. Was it an accidental fall from the top of the apple tree, or was it suicide? Only the Rhodesian Ridgeback can tell him.

I won't reveal what (if any) clues he gets from the dog, but that plot frames the real heart of the books, the story of his marriage with Lexy: how they met; their first, week-long date; the masks she made; the fights they fought. His search for clues is absurd but poignant; the seedy underworld it leads him into is forgettable, overshadowed by the more believable story of one couple's emotional journey.