Christopher, our protagonist, initially starts off trying to solve the mystery of who killed his neighbor's dog. That mystery is solved fairly early in the book and a larger problem is revealed. The latter half of the book deals with this larger problem and left me feeling bland. While it was interesting to see how this young man attempts to function in the "real world", it becomes wearisome after a while and you just feel kind of sad for him because he just does not function well socially and you fear he never will. He's brilliant with math and science and tends to describe a lot of math and science in the book, but my eyes glazed over during those parts.
The silver lining is that he does test his limits and challenge himself when push comes to shove. Best of all, he rises to his challenges in the "real world", albeit quite messily. So I guess if the point of the book was to open people's eyes to the world of autism, it does a very solid job. I think this is a good introductory way of being exposed to autism in an accessible way. However, don't let the title fool you into thinking the entire book will be about solving a dog's murder. It has very little to do with dogs at all. The dog's murder is a red herring (if you read the book, you'll get my reference).
