If You Read Only One Mystery Novel This Summer...

(4 of 4)

Christopher is a fan of Sherlock Holmes, whose devotion to logic and reason are a boon to a young man who can't understand emotions, and Christopher uses the Holmes stories as a kind of User's Guide to Life. While Christopher slowly teases out the sinister story behind Wellington's murder--which involves him and his family more intimately than he at first supposes--we gradually learn what it's like to dwell in the mind of a child with a photographic memory, who knows every prime number up to 7,057, but who can't understand what a hypothetical question is. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is funny, sad and totally convincing. But is it a mystery novel at all? Or a meta-mystery? Or something entirely new? That itself is a mystery--and worth investigating.