The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time takes place in the year 1998 in and around the town of Swindon, England. The fifteen-year-old narrator of the story, Christopher John Francis Boone,   The titular curious incident is the mystery surrounding the death of Wellington, his neighbor Mrs. Shears' poodle, after Christopher finds the dog speared with a garden fork. While trying to discover who killed Wellington, he encounters resistance from many neighbors, but mostly from his widowed father, Ed.