Life for 13-year-old Jasper is extra difficult. He has prosopagnosia – the inability to recognise faces – and synaesthesia – a condition in which, for him, sounds, from voices to bird calls to traffic, are converted into colours in his mind. The trickle of water from a tap is ‘small circular clouds of kingfisher blue’, and the banging sound of a car door shutting is ‘dark brown oval with layers of grey’.

The only way he can recognise people is by their voice or their clothes. If someone whispers, the colours change and he can’t recognise them. Clothes are a good clue: ‘Dark Blue Baseball Cap Man’, and ‘Sea-Green Coat Boy’. Unless his father speaks with his muddy brown voice or wears his normal clothes, Jasper can’t recognise him.

Jasper spends hours in his bedroom after school with his binoculars, watching the parakeets who live in the trees in the garden of the house opposite. Bee Larkham lives there. Jasper is fascinated by Bee as she plays ‘martian’ music loudly and he sees her dancing in her lounge room. She loves the parakeets too.

Suddenly Bee is nowhere to be seen and Jasper tries to convince everyone that something sinister has happened to his favourite neighbour. He has the colours all mixed up in his head and nobody seems to understand what he is telling them.

I really enjoyed this book. I thought I might tire of Jasper’s colours, but I never did. The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder will inevitably be compared to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, but it stands solidly on its own, with an intriguing mystery that had me reading well into the night, desperate to find out who ‘did it’.

Reviewed by Rowena Morcom