The Curious Incident Of A Dog In The Nighttime By Mark Haddon

Title
The novel The Curious Incident of a Dog in The Nighttime by Mark Haddon is about a 15 year old Autistic boy Christopher and his finding of a dead dog which is owned by a neighbour. The death and his enjoyment of mystery novels leads him to start writing and investigating the death of Wellington the dog, with the sole purpose of finding out who had murdered the dog and solving other family issue on the way. Christopher has written book as a detective novel and he does fulfill the expectations. A detective story is a story whose plot revolves around the investigation and solving of a crime which is Christopher investigation on the death of Wellington and later on to what had happened to his mother.
This story does reach the requirement for a detective novel because of all the element that are used to make this story a mystery. I think that this novel has similarities of other mystery novels For example this novel builds a lot of tension because of as Christopher was getting closer and closer to solving the mystery there is many issues that encounters that lead into newer problems.
Like all mystery novel there has to be other problems that the detective runs into while solving the crime. When his father had intervened and told him to stop his investigation and just to make sure his father made him promise and Christopher responded saying “I promise.” This builds a lot of suspense because knowing the character that Christopher is he takes his promise serious but Christopher had to have found a way to get through this promise. At this part of the story the tension starts to build up as it there are many possible outcomes to what might happen as this leave the reader with suspense just like any other mystery novel. To be more specific I can relate this novel has many similarities like The Hound of Baskerville which the main character was Sherlock Holmes and the detective that carried the investigation. A similarity would the conflict because in the novel the conflict was between the Protagonist which is Christopher and the Antagonist which is his father is similar to the conflict between Sherlock Holmes and Jack Stapleton Both Antagonist had short temper like when Christopher father burst of fury on his
son.
Also both stories start with mysterious deaths that has taken place and then the detective investigates on that crime scene to solve the mystery. As both detective collect clues and discover something new a long the way. This novel has the structure of a mystery novel and it has the same factors. Christopher is the main character and is also the detective who goes on to solve the mystery. In this novel Christopher was the only person that was carrying on with this investigation as he pursued with the most passion. This novel Christopher speaks in first person and the mystery is written from his perspective. It is confirmed that Christopher is writing this because when he is talking to Sioban he tell him that why is he not going to take this crime to the police and when he said “I am writing this” this makes the reader assume that Christopher is the detective for this case. Also Christopher did have the characteristics of a detective as he was never bias and knew that everyone was a suspect. The author used a lot of foreshadowing in the story to give the readers clue like the Father’s excessive anger over Christopher’s desire to investigate Wellington’s murder. This was always odd and was a huge clue to the reader from the author Mark Haddon. As Christopher had mentioned his investigation at home his father had responded as his tone was furious
"OK, Christopher. I am going to say this for the last and final time. I will not tell you again. Look at me when I'm talking to you, for God's sake. Look at me. You are not to go asking Mrs. Shears about who killed that bloody dog. You are not to go asking anyone about who killed that bloody dog. You are not to go trespassing in other people's gardens. You are to stop this ridiculous bloody detective game right now.”(49) This was a sense of foreshadowing because it made the reader think why Christopher father was getting stressed when his son was doing the investigation. It had to be affecting him in someway for him to get this angry with Christopher and how angry he got when Christopher mentioned Mr. Shears name. This was one of the clues that the author gave for the reader to unfold the mystery.

Lastly the general plot of this story had fulfilled the expectations for a mystery novel. This novel follows the criteria of a plot for a detective novel like the Protagonist works to solve the mystery but then again runs into danger. In this story Christopher does go through this when he finally finds the murderer of Wellington’s death. Christopher thought that he was in danger as he said “I had to get out of the house. Father had murdered Wellington. That meant he could murder me, because I couldn't trust him, even though he had said "Trust me," because he had told a lie about a big thing”. Christopher had thought that his father was going to be a threat towards him and even when he had solved the mystery he still felt like he was in danger and that his life was on the line. For the story to build dramatic tension the author had put in a plot twist that changed the story completely. The story had gone from the death of Wellington to what had really happened to Christopher Mother. A plot twist is a unexpected development in a book and usually takes place to build more tension in the storyline and usually shocks the reader. The plot twist in this story had to be when Christopher sneaked into his father room and finds those letters from his mother. In one of the letter his mothers said “I was not a very good mother, Christopher. Maybe if things had been different, maybe if you'd been different, I might have been better at it. But that's just the way things turned out.” In total there was 43 letters that his mother sends Christopher explaining why she had to leave and his father never even showed one of them. This was a surprise to the readers because earlier in the story Christopher father said that his mother had died. After Christopher had read the letters the plot of the story had changed as he finds out that his father killed the dog. The stoy line switched over to finding Christopher mother and the truth. The general plot of the story plays a factor in if it’s a detective novel.
The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Nighttime was rounded out to be a mystery novel because of all the similarities between the novel and Sherlock Holmes Hound of Baskerville. By the literary techniques that were used to build tension and make the novel more interesting. Also the significance of Christopher solving one mystery to another wwhi huge plot twist in the story as many of the reader were not expecting. Just like any other mystery novel this grab a lot attention in the readers as Christopher point of view is always a different approach for an mystery but was successful. The Curious Inciden