Mark Haddon's protagonist, Christopher, is an autistic boy who discovers that his neighbor's dog has been murdered. The novel is told entirely in Christopher's own words, as he tries to solve the case. It's a fabulous gambit, and one that pays off in an entirely unexpected way.

I haven't read very many books whose narrator has a mental illness or deficiency, and I suspect that it's hard to create a successful novel in this genre. In recent memory, I can certainly point to Matt Ruff's Set This House in Order (Multiple Personality Disorder) and Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn (Tourette's) as successful examples, and although I liked Ruff's book more, I'm much more comfortable recommending Haddon's novel to a wide audience. It's straightforward without ever being obvious; it's by turns heartbreaking and heartwarming; it's often funny, without ever taking potshots at the protagonist; and it feels very real. I particularly recommend it to geeks like myself who sometimes find themselves more comfortable solving a math problem than interacting with other people.

(A shoutout to XTC-geeks: the novel is set in Swindon, England, the home of Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding. An irrelevant coincidence, of course.)