Product placement in novels

Everyone is (or should be) familiar with "product placement" in movies (we detailed Apple's success in that regard last week).  What I hadn't appreciated was the degree to which product placement is used in modern fiction - perhaps because most of my reading tends to be non-fiction.  My wife says the practice is sometimes so blatant that she stops reading novels when the placement is too much "in your face."

It apparently is not a new phenomenon.  I found a discussion of literary product placment in a 2006 New York Times article, and this egregious example cited at Cars.com:

Over the weekend, my wife sat down to read the latest James Patterson novel, “Cross.” ... My wife pointed out early in the book that Cross detailed a trip to a Mercedes-Benz dealer in detail, and it seemed odd to her — especially in the middle of the plot. Here’s that first excerpt:

“So we stopped at the Mercedes dealer…Jannie and Damon ogled a silver CLK500 Cabriolet convertible, while Ali and I tested out the spacious front seat of an R350. I was thinking family car — safety, beauty, resale value. Intellect and emotion.”

The italics are verbatim. He goes on to talk about the rest of the trip to the dealer, but resale value? Anyway, this takes up an entire chapter. Perhaps if it had been just one mention we wouldn’t have been disturbed, but then Cross goes and buys the R350 later and repeatedly goes for drives to clear his mind during the investigation. Even that wouldn’t be that bad if he didn’t describe the R350 each time like this: “I liked the vehicle’s zip and also the dual-dash zone climate control, which would keep everybody happy, even Nana Mama.” 

I'll defer any personal commentary.