<p>I've editing this original question as I think I've narrowed down the problem...</p>

<p>I have one view in my site that will not let me put $document.ready within a masterpage contentplaceholder. I've stripped this page to the bare bones and the only thing that is special about it is it has a custom route in global.asax</p>

<pre><code> routes.MapRoute("Books",
                 "{controller}/{action}/{keywords}/{pageNumber}",
                  new { controller = "Books", action = "SearchResults" }
                 );
</code></pre>

<p>Any idea why this custom route would stop $document.ready working correctly when put in a masterpages contentplaceholder zone?</p>

Your master page (or view page if you're not using master pages) needs to reference jquery.  This is included in the latest Beta release of the MVC framework.
Check to make sure you have jQuery included in the  tag of your page.
check the syntax as well...
```
```
$(document).ready(function() { alert('loaded'); });
```
```
these shortened versions also work:
```
```
$().ready(function() { alert('loaded'); });
$(function() { alert('loaded'); });
```
```