The title The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (or the curious incident of the dog in the night-time as it appears within the book) is an appropriate one for Mark Haddon's ingenious novel both because of its reference to that most obsessive and fact-obsessed of detectives, Sherlock Holmes, and because its lower-case letters indicate something important about its narrator.

Christopher is an intelligent youth who lives in the functional hinterland of autism--every day is an investigation for him because of all the aspects of human life that he does not quite get. When the dog next door is killed with a garden fork, Christopher becomes quietly persistent in his desire to find out what has happened and tugs away at the world around him until a lot of secrets unravel messily.

Haddon makes an intelligent stab at how it feels to, for example, not know how to read the faces of the people around you, to be perpetually spooked by certain colours and certain levels of noise, to hate being touched to the point of violent reaction. Life is difficult for the difficult and prickly Christopher in ways that he only partly understands; this avoids most of the obvious pitfalls of novels about disability because it demands that we respect--perhaps admire--him rather than pity him. --Roz Kaveney

This book was purchased having completed the Potter series (to book 4).

It was slow to begin with but very good by the end, prompting me to buy the others.

My advice would be to give it a go, make sure you read to the end and then buy the others!

I decided to read this book to get me back into reading. I had previously struggled with Hilary Clinton's autobiography and a book by Will Self both of which were hard to read but I enjoyed them. Initially I enjoyed this book and was reminded how I had enjoyed Light a Penny candle and Night Class in the past. Unfortunately after a while, the book became predictable and shallow, I knew exactly what was going to happen and felt it lacked any substance. I would recommend this book if you don't need to think at all but if you want a little more, steer clear.