The London Eye Mystery [Paperback]

Good young adult and middle grade mysteries are sometimes hard to come by. THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY by Siobhan Dowd is one you won't want to miss.

It all starts when Ted's cousin, Salim, comes to visit. Salim and his mother are about to move to New York City and have planned a family visit in London before their departure. Of course, what is a visit to London without a ride on the London Eye? That's when the trouble begins.

Ted and his older sister, Kat, haven't seen much of their cousin in the past. The visit starts out on a wrong note because of the unusual sleeping arrangements required by their tiny house. Kat is unhappy about bunking on the couch, and Ted is unhappy with the disruption of his whole routine. As Ted explains, he suffers from a "syndrome," which he defines by stating that his brain runs on "a different operating system" than everyone else. His judgment of other people's emotional responses is a bit off, and his views of the world around him tend to be quite literal. (I'm guessing that he suffers from some form of autism.)

Salim turns out to be quite a pleasant visitor. His only request is to take a ride on the London Eye, a massive ferris wheel attraction in the center of London. When the cousins and their mothers arrive at the Eye, they find the ticket line and actual ride line disappointingly long. Relief comes when a stranger offers one ticket, free of charge, to Salim. Ted and Kat eagerly accept the ticket and pocket the original ticket money from their mother as they rush Salim to the waiting ride.

The mystery begins when Salim doesn't disembark from the London Eye at the conclusion of his ride. Ted and Kat have as many as nine different theories. Was he kidnapped? Did he actually go on the ride at all? How could he have vanished so completely?

Quirky characters, London scenery, and a who-dun-it style combine to make this a sure hit. The late Siobhan Dowd, author of A Swift Pure Cry, outdid herself once again.

Reviewed by: Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky"

Siobhan Dowd's THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY tells of a boy who mysteriously vanishes from the sealed pod of the London Eye. Even the police are baffled - and it's up to Ted and his older sister to become sleuthing partners, tracing a trail of clues across London in search of an endangered cousin. Add the tensions surrounding their stormy relationship and you have a satisfying mystery powered by changing personal relationships.

"What goes up must come down
Spinning wheel got to go 'round"
--Blood, Sweat & Tears

"Kat and I tracked Salim's capsule as it made its orbit. When it reached its highest point, we both said, 'NOW!' at the same time and Kat laughed and I joined in. That's how we knew we'd been tracking the right one. We saw the people bunch up as the capsule came back down, facing northeast towards the automatic camera for the souvenir photograph. They were just dark bits of jackets, legs, dresses, and sleeves.
"Then the capsule landed. The doors opened and the passengers came out in twos and threes. They walked off in different directions. Their faces were smiling. Their paths never crossed again.
"But Salim wasn't among them.
"We waited for the next capsule and the next and the one after that. He still didn't appear. Somewhere, somehow, in the thirty minutes of riding the Eye, in his sealed capsule, he had vanished off the face of the earth. This is how having a funny brain that runs on a different operating system from other people's helped me to figure out what had happened."

Twelve-year-old Ted's mind does not process like that of the typical person. He is wired in a fashion that causes him to be "very good at thinking about facts and how things work." He is a young man with an obsession with and excellent understanding of weather and weather patterns.

Ted and Kat's cousin Salim and their Aunt Gloria have come visiting them in London, having given up their home in Manchester in preparation for a move to New York City. Ted hasn't seen the likeable Salim in years. When asked what he'd like to do, Salim, who loves a good view, opts for experiencing a spin on the London Eye. Then, when a random stranger offers them a free ticket, Salim snags the freebie, leaves his cousins standing in the lengthy ticket line, boards the Eye, and disappears.

Ted has a "syndrome" that makes it difficult for him to recognize body language, makes it difficult to cope with others touching him, and often causes him to take what is said literally: "He and Aunt Gloria walked up to our front door through our front garden, which Mum says is the size of a postage stamp. In fact, it's three metres by five and I once worked out that it could fit 22,500 stamps."

Nevertheless, Ted -- whose theories and questions are generally ignored by most of the adults around him -- uses his unusually-wired mind to examine the facts from all possible angles in his quest to solve the London Eye Mystery.

"The inspector looked at me without saying anything. The corners of her lips turned up, which meant she was slightly amused. Then she tapped her nose with her interlocked fingers. 'So,' she said. 'You'd allow for a margin of error?'
"'Only a small one,' I said. 'Two per cent.'
"'Two per cent?'
"'In every human observation,' I explained, 'there is a margin of error. This is because our senses are not foolproof. In fact, some people believe that one hundred per cent certainty is impossible to achieve.' I stopped and put my head on one side. 'As humans, we cannot even be sure that the sun will rise the next day. Our assumption that it will do so is arrived at by a process of induction. This is a process where probability based on past observation allows us to predict things like weather patterns--'"

THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY is so much fun! Ted is such an engaging and endearing narrator, and it is so interesting to follow his lines of reasoning as we, as readers, try to catch a dropped clue that will give us an edge over the book's characters in figuring out what has actually befallen Salim. This book will surely cause readers to consider with newfound respect those classmates and friends who are wired differently -- and will certainly have some readers thinking about the weather.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 30 reviews  4.1 out of 5 stars