On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation.

It was an extraordinary news story.

The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny,

mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared.

One of the great mysteries in English criminal history. We're still looking for

Lucan. It's honestly one of the most powerful stories of my lifetime. I'm Alex Fontunzelman. This is

the Lucan Obsession. Listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, today on Open Book, Neurodiversity in Fiction.

Her gut demanded she tell Michael the truth.

Though he wasn't aware of the true extent of them, he already knew about her issues.

Sensitivities to smell, sound and touch.

Her obsession with her work, her need for routine,

and her awkwardness with people. What he didn't know was there were labels for that, a diagnosis.

But was pity any better than hatred? Right now now he thought she was insensitive and rude,

"'but he still viewed her as a regular person

"'who happened to have some eccentricities.

"'With the labels, he might be more understanding,

"'but he'd quit viewing her as Stella Lane,

"'awkward econometian who loved his kisses.

In his eyes, she'd become the girl with autism. She'd be less.

A passage from Helen Hoang's kiss quotient, a love story not often encompassed in romance novels because the central character Stella identifies as autistic, one condition that encompasses neurodiversity. And it raises the question a label's helpful or hurtful.

Across the world of fiction, we're familiar with characters who might speculate have autism,

Christopher Boone in the curious incident of the dog in the night time, or Lisbeth Salander in the girl with a dragon tattoo.

...