If You Read Only One Mystery Novel This Summer...

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I know, I know but it all makes far more sense than you would think. Barron's basic conceit is surprisingly persuasive: the same qualities that made Austen a brilliant writer make her an ace detective, namely, her quick wit and her psychological acuity. Barron's cause is also aided by her deft marshaling of historical detail the textiles alone (Sprigged muslin! Bombazine!) are worth the price of admission and, of course, a dash of genuine erotic friction between Jane and the roguish Lord Harold. Barron is scrupulously faithful to the historical record, so we know that Jane will never actually get married. But shouldn't we let her and Barron and ourselves have a little fun along the way?

NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS , by Valerie Block (Ballantine; 337 pages)

Missing: one lazy, affable middle-age accountant and $96,564,217.78 of his clients' money, which was snaffled away via a tangled network of stolen laptops and offshore accounts. Under suspicion: said missing accountant, plus his wife, now a fading ex-model, and his workaholic office assistant, who never had much to fade from. On the case: Detectives Dennis Sprague and Anthony Ballestrino, Computer Crimes Squad. Yes, they carry guns, and no, they're not sensitive about being computer detectives. Well, maybe a little.

Doesn't Valerie Block know that mystery dialogue isn't supposed to sparkle? Doesn't she realize it's supposed to be hard-boiled to the point of inedibility? None of Your Business is actually a magnificently dry social comedy, cunningly smuggled inside a meticulously researched, perfectly paced police procedural, like a virus packaged in a witty e-mail. As Sprague and Ballestrino worry away at a thin trail of clues, they banter and snipe at each other, stress about their expanding waistlines and diminishing love lives and generally behave like real human beings. It's an episode of Law & Order scripted by Candace Bushnell. And if that's not enough, for maximum degree of difficulty, Block supplies us with that rarest of creatures, a sympathetic, believable and deliciously malicious villain who by the end of the book has stolen not only the $100 million but the show as well.

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME , by Mark Haddon (Doubleday; 226 pages)

For 15-year-old Christopher Boone, the hero of this year's most unusual mystery novel, the entire world is a mystery. Christopher is autistic. He can't understand ordinary jokes. He can't read other people's facial expressions. When people touch him, he panics and screams. So when he stumbles on the corpse of his neighbor's dog Wellington impaled on a garden fork, it's just one more mystery that needs solving. "In a murder mystery novel," the young man tells us, with his permanently straight face, "someone has to work out who the murderer is and then catch them. It is a puzzle." Indeed.

Christopher is a fan of Sherlock Holmes, whose devotion to logic and reason are a boon to a young man who can't understand emotions, and Christopher uses the Holmes stories as a kind of User's Guide to Life. While Christopher slowly teases out the sinister story behind Wellington's murder which involves him and his family more intimately than he at first supposes we gradually learn what it's like to dwell in the mind of a child with a photographic memory, who knows every prime number up to 7,057, but who can't understand what a hypothetical question is. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is funny, sad and totally convincing. But is it a mystery novel at all? Or a meta-mystery? Or something entirely new? That itself is a mystery and worth investigating.