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Triumphant as crime, novel, and autistic insight A triumphant autistic fantasy. Haddon manages to write a consistently engaging book from the perspective of an autistic teenager. It feels too palatable to me as non-autistic to feel the structure and style is utterly authentic - but it's still an impressive imaginative feat. It's more than that. It's very satisfying as a detective novel. Who did kill the dog? And finding *that* out only invites more questions - bigger and more threatening ones. There's that lovely twist of the knife when we realise this diverting investigation about other people actually is coming right back to suddenly be very personal. There are plausible surprises that really manage to effect you while integrating perfectly with the crime plot and building intensity. It's more than that. These characters, Christopher, his family and neighbours, really manage to come across as believable people. They are imperfect, they do good things, bad things, but always understandable things. Sometimes you want to get into the pages and shout at them, but even when they arouse our anger they've still got our sympathy: not bad given the extremity of their behaviour. And this is not even to mention the pleasure of Chris' deadpan narration of constant, often laugh out loud funny, dialogue misunderstandings, nor the thought-provoking (if at times straw-man) philosophical asides. Or the page turning odyssey in Chris' epic flight to London - as riveting a narrative as any dramatic escape I've come across in any thriller. Top stuff. Very original. Good characters. Good episodes. Excellent structure. What else do you want?