The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
- 260
- Pages
- about 5 h
- Reading time
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Our view
The mystery of a dead dog is only the way in: what makes this novel is its fifteen-year-old narrator. He has a gift for maths and little grasp of others’ feelings, and his literal, orderly voice turns a family story into something quietly moving. The unusual perspective is easy to follow, and at 260 pages it is short. Readers after a conventional whodunit should know it is as much about family as detection.
Worth knowing Mark Haddon’s narrator, fifteen-year-old Christopher, numbers his chapters only in prime numbers, and the title comes from a line in the Sherlock Holmes story Silver Blaze. Published in 2003 for both adults and young readers, it won the Whitbread Book of the Year. Haddon has said he never meant Christopher to be read as a case study of a diagnosis, whatever the marketing said. Simon Stephens’s stage version won the Tony for best play in 2015.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a 2003 mystery novel by English writer Mark Haddon. Haddon and The Curious Incident won the Whitbread Book Awards for Best Novel and Book of the Year, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book, and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.6 across 2,260 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 94% of the weight and the score stays at 7.6 — the Crime & mystery average of 7.6 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.9 | 238 | 11% |
| Google Books | 8.0 | 11 | 1% |
| Hardcover | 7.6 | 2K | 89% |
Frequently asked
What age is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time for?
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time sits on the Young adult shelf in the sources we use, which by convention means roughly ages 13 and up. This is a guide from the book’s category, not a publisher’s age rating. It has 260 pages — shorter than 90% of the ranked books in Crime & mystery.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Crime & mystery — with scores between 7.5 and 7.9, closest to this book.
