the curious incident of the dog in the night-time

[lokheed]

I just finished reading an amazing book.  It's a murder mystery, of sorts.  The murder victim is a black poodle named Wellington, who is found dead with a garden fork in him at 7 minutes after midnight by the book's protagonist.  The novel is told in the first person as a written account by a fifteen year old autistic boy, puzzling through who would want to kill his neighbor's dog and why.  The chapters are not numbered like other books (1, 2, 3...); instead, Christopher prefers to use prime numbers.  Here is why:

This is how you work out what prime numbers are.

First you write down all the positive whole numbers in the world.  Then you take away all the numbers that are multiples of 2.  Then you take away all the numbers that are multiples of 3.  Then you take away all the numbers that are multiples of 4 and 5 and 6 and 7 and so on.  The numbers that are left are the prime numbers.

The rule for working out prime numbers is really simple, but no one has ever worked out a simple formula for telling you whenter a very big number is a prime number or what the next one will be.  If a number is really, really big, it can take a computer years to work out whether it is a prime number.

Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America the are classified as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits long you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000.  But it would not be a very good way of making a living.

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away.  I think prime numbers are like life.  They are very logical, but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

The author, Mark Haddon, gets it absolutely right.  The story is funny, and dark, and moving, and takes some very surprising turns.

Do yourself a favor, and find yourself a copy of this book.