You know from the first paragraph that this is no ordinary book.
"It was 7 minutes after midnight," it begins, "The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears' house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead."
It takes author Mark Haddon just six sentences to arrest your attention and thrust you into the skin of his narrator, a 15-year-old autistic boy. Christopher Boone has a form of autism known as Asperger's Syndrome. Haddon doesn't explain what Asperger's is -- he doesn't need to. Through 268 unputdownable pages, we see the world through Christopher's eyes -- and what a bewildering world it is.