William Boyd’s latest literary work is causing quite a stir. The Vanishing Game, the British author’s new short thriller, concerns itself with Alec Dunbar, an out-of-work actor who is contracted by a mysterious Miss Devereaux to deliver an unusual package to a remote location in Scotland. With Dunbar’s car off the road, Devereaux offers him the use of her beaten-up old Land Rover Defender. The extra twist in the tale is that the author was commissioned by Land Rover to write the story and the central figure in the piece is neither Dunbar nor Devereaux but the Defender itself.
Product placement is a well-established part of film and TV production and is often used as a form of visual shorthand to sketch out a character’s personality. So why do we bristle so much when we see it used in literature? Maybe it’s because when we turn to a good book and sip our morning coffee (insert brand here) or check the time on our watch (insert maker’s name here) we don’t always want to be distracted by trade names.
