by JULIET WATERS

Here’s how 15-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone, hero of Mark Haddon’s A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, remembers the jail cell where he spent a night after being arrested for assaulting a police officer: “It was nice in the police cell. It was almost a perfect cube 2 meters long by 2 meters wide by 2 meters high. It contained approximately 8 cubic meters of air.”

Much later in the book he will explain what is so comforting about this environment. Christopher is an autistic savant. “I see everything. That is why I don’t like new places.” He also remembers many things—knows the capital of every country, and every prime number up to 7,057. When he ends up in an unfamiliar place—a department store, for example—he experiences a sensory overload that makes his mind crash. A prison cell is one of the only unfamiliar places in the world where he might feel safe.

This is not, however, why he assaulted a police officer. Christopher discovered his neighbour’s poodle, Wellington, recently murdered with a pitchfork. “I had been hugging the dog for 4 minutes when I heard screaming.” A investigating policeman makes the mistake of touching Christopher, who does not like to be touched, and is remarkably strong.

Once the confusion is sorted out and Christopher is released from jail, he decides he’ll solve Wellington’s murder and write a book about it, like The Hound of the Baskervilles, one of the few books of fiction he likes and understands. “This will not be a funny book. I cannot tell jokes because I can’t understand them,” he tells us. But he’s wrong. It’s a very funny book. It’s also quite frightening, a fascinating probe into the mysteries of the human soul and an effortless, fun read that can be finished in a weekend. It’s the perfect book for anyone who didn’t get around to reading something good this summer and wants to solve that problem before September.

This may be why it suddenly appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for the first time last week, at #11, despite having been released in mid-June, and despite what many readers would consider an unpromising narrator. As evidence, however, of the wide range of tastes this book will probably appeal to, it’s been optioned for film as a joint project by the producers of the Harry Potter franchise and Brad Grey, executive producer of The Sopranos. Believe it or not this actually makes a lot of sense.

Haddon is the author of numerous award-winning children’s books and A Curious Incident... has all the charm and simplicity of a successful kids’ book. But it’s definitely adult fiction. As Christopher delves further into the mystery of Wellington, he unearths the mysteries of his dysfunctional working-class parents, their broken marriage and Wellington’s slutty owners. Christopher has such difficulty processing emotion that the most ordinary feelings are as confusing and frustrating to him as they are to a sociopath like Tony Soprano.

Yet beneath this numbness there beats a strong and loyal heart that is desperately dependent on these people he doesn’t quite get. The way in which his parents have to transcend their obvious limitations to take care of their math-genius son is also poignant without being maudlin.

The simplest things in Christopher’s life take on a palpable terror. A tube ride through London feels like vintage Roman Polanski. Yet he can consider the most frightening things—a parent’s death, for example—with comfortable detachment. Christopher also manages to provoke unlikely emotional responses as well; a happy ending left this hardened critic sobbing uncontrollably for a good minute. Pretty good for a narrator who has no capacity for sentimentality.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, Doubleday, hc, 224pp, $34.95