The opening of a novel

• The opening of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" written by Mark Haddon.
  

"It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The points of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer, for example, or road accident.. But I could not be certain about this. I went through Mrs Shears' gate, closing it behind me. I walked onto her lawn and knelt beside the dog. I put my hand on the muzzle of the dog. It was still warm.
The dog was called Wellington. It belonged to Mrs Shears' who was our friend. She lived on the opposite side of the rod, two houses to the left.
Wellington was a poodle. Not one of the small poodles that have hairstyles, but a big poodle. It had curly back fur, but when you got close you could see that the skin underneath the fur was a very pale yellow, like chicken.
I stroked Wellington and wondered who had killed him, and why."






The author opens this novel by telling exact time when something had happened, which also leads to reader involvement. It bilds up many questions, for example, "What is the character doing on the street at that time?" and "What had happened? Why?".
The novel is written in first person. The opening introduces reader with one of the characters, which is the dead dog, there's also a description of Mrs Shears' who is said to be the owner of the dog and a friend, but there is a little description of the person who tells the story, it's only known that this person lives near and knew the dog. The opening also introduces empathy of the character, the reader is told how the speaking character feels and what he thinks, for example, the dog was killed with the fork, in his opinion.
A good description to what had happened, that builds up an image of how everything could look like, which is very important for a reader to get the right sense. Since the novel is opened by a death incident, we can guess that the rest of the novel will be built up around it.