The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Mark Haddon
272 pages (including appendix)

Main character: Christopher Boone
Other characters: Mrs Shears, Mr Shears, Mother, Father (Ed Boones)

Summary
The story is about a boy, 15 years, 3 months and 2 days old, who copes with behaviour problems. He is autistic. Although he is very clever, he has some strange character traits. He doesn’t like to be touched, hugged or whatsoever and he dislikes strangers. He prefers to squeeze himself into tight spaces and think about the universe and prime numbers. He’s a whizz in maths and he likes to have everything organized around him. He loves timetables and other things that he can always trust.
The story starts with the death of a neighbour’s dog. Its seven minutes past midnight. The dog’s name is Wellington and it’s a poodle. Christopher finds it lying on the lawn with a garden fork sticking out its side. He likes dogs, so he stays with the dog until Mrs. Shears comes running outside, screaming “What the fuck are you doing with my dog!” He tries to explain what happened, but a policeman grabs him at the arm. Christopher doesn’t like to be touched. He hits him.

He gets a warning at the police station. He is very upset and he tries to track down the murderer of Wellington. He is doing detective-work in the neighbourhood, but the clues he gets make no sense. His dad forbids him to continue the investigations, but despite these tries he carries on with the research. At his special school he gets to write a book. He starts to write a detective about a dog killed in the night. He is terrified of strangers, but he pulls himself together and asks the neighbours what happened. Soon his main suspect becomes Mr Shears. He had divorced Mrs Shears and murdering her dog could be a way to hurt her feelings. He tells his father and he freaks out. He doesn’t want the name of that man mentioned in his house. He forbids him to continue writing the book, and Christopher promises he will stop it. He rarely breaks his promises.
The next day he spots five red cars in a row. For him, that means the day is going to be a “Super Good Day”. He knows something special is going to happen. After school he is talking to Mrs Alexander, another neighbour. He tells her his mom is dead and she is shocked. She didn’t know. She tells him that Mr Shears was having a relation with his mum long before Mr Shears divorced Mrs Shears. Christopher decides to keep on writing his book. One day Christopher’s dad finds the book. He loses control and they have a fight. His dad hides the book. The next day he starts looking for his novel. He finds it in a shirt box on top of his father’s closet. Then he discovers something outrageous. His father had always told him that his mother died of a heart attack. Under the book he finds letters, dating from 18 months after his mother “died”. It turns out that his father lied to him. His mother is living in London. His dad also tells that he has murdered Wellington.
Christopher becomes very afraid of his father. He believes that he could kill him too. He runs away. Because he has just discovered that his mother is still alive, he flees to London, where his mother is living. He struggles to get to the big city. He doesn’t understand the “chaotic” minds of other people. He finally arrives at his mother’s house. He sleeps there. In the middle of the night his father comes to take him back, but Christopher doesn’t want that. He wants to stay with his mother. Mr Shears doesn’t like that, so Christopher's mother leaves him and moves back to Swindon with her son.
Back in Swindon, Christopher takes his A-level math exams and scores a clean A. His father wishes that Christopher could forgive him so he buys a dog for Christopher, a golden retriever. At the end Christopher is happy that he solved the mystery of the dead dog, found his mother, went to London all by himself and wrote a book. To him it means that he can achieve anything he wants in his life. He might even be able to become an astronaut – the future he has always dreamed of.