History Literature / TheCuriousIncidentOfTheDogInTheNightTime

One late night (exactly 7 minutes after midnight), he finds his neighbour's dog killed by a garden fork, leading him into an investigation that becomes about more than just a dead dog, but about the real world told through the eyes of a 15-year-old with severe autism, right down to the unnecessary details.

* ItsAllAboutMe: Christopher, his mother and Mr and Mrs. Shears (downplayed in that Mrs. Shears just doesn't want to help Christopher to the point of being his mom, and in Christopher's own case one can't really blame him).

** When Christopher finds out that [[spoiler:Ed killed Wellington]], he is terrified because he feels he can't trust [[spoiler:his father]] any more because of how he lied about not only that but the fact that [[spoiler:he told Christopher his mother was dead, which she wasn't.]]

''The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time'' (2003) is a novel by Mark Haddon. It is about young Christopher John Francis Boone, who knows all the countries of the world and their capital cities and all the prime numbers up to 7,057, but has almost no comprehension of human emotion.

* NoAntagonist: The story has no defined bad guy. Ed tries to paint Mr. Shears as one [[spoiler:because Judy left Ed after starting an affair with Mr. Shears, and Mr. Shears doesn't want Christopher around when he decides he wants to live with Judy. Christopher views his father as one when Ed confesses that he killed Wellington]].

* LongTitle: Possibly reflecting Christopher's way of speaking.

''The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time'' (2003) is a novel by Mark Haddon. It is about young Christopher John Francis Boone, who knows all the countries of the world and their capital cities and all the prime numbers up to 7,507, but has almost no comprehension of human emotion.

* SuperOCD: Christopher gets very upset when anything in his house is changed and goes as far as measuring where the furniture is so he can put it back in the right places after his mother vacuums. He likes Mrs. Shears because she's very neat and organizes everything in the kitchen.

* ExactWords: When Christopher's father admonishes him to drop the investigation into Wellington's murder, Christopher carefully picks apart his father's words and deduces that, literally speaking, Ed has not expressly forbidden him from talking to his neighbour Mrs Alexander, although Christopher clearly isn't supposed to be asking her about the murder. His father even points out he still disobeyed, as he ''did'' also say to stop interrogating people (although he used a more colorful version but so did he when he asked him to stop asking about who killed the "fucking" dog) which makes Christopher so scared he has problem remembering what happened.

** Involves an actual dog. [[spoiler:After Christopher's pet rat Toby dies, Ed, desperately wanting to make things up to Christopher after everything that has happened, gets him a present, a Golden Retriever puppy, and says that Christopher can name him. The trope is then literally invoked when Christopher strokes the puppy, which he decides to call Sandy]].

* ItsAllAboutMe: Christopher, his mother and Mr and Mrs. Shears (downplayed in that Mrs. Shears just doesn't want to help Christopher to the point of being his mom).

* AmbiguousDisorder:
** While Christopher is clearly meant to be somewhere on the autistic spectrum, it never says in the novel what exactly he is diagnosed with, if anything.
** In the final chapter, Christopher mentions [[spoiler: his mother]] being prescribed with pills to "stop her from feeling sad".
** His dad may have anger issues, it might just be the stress but [[spoiler: killing a dog with a pitchfork is kind of extreme.]]
** Some of the kids in special aide class have a fixation with feces.

* DefectiveDetective: Christopher, naturally, given his autism (or at least a similar AmbiguousDisorder).

* CessationOfExistence: As a scientific materialist in his views, Christopher is pretty damn convinced that absolutely nothing happens after one dies, and so for him it's illogical to even ''speculate'' on what his dead [[spoiler:(or so he thinks)]] mother might think or feel about his current situation even in a purely hypothetical sense, because as far as he's concerned, there are no mental or conscious processes after death—the body just starts decomposing and going back into nature, and that's it, unless it was atomised via cremation and its component atoms poured out into the stratosphere, in so doing becoming part of the weather.