The London Eye Mystery [Hardcover]

Siobhan Dowd (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 12, 2008 | Age Level: 8 and up | Grade Level: 3 and up

Ted and Kat watched their cousin Salim board the London Eye. But after half an hour it landed and everyone trooped off–except Salim. Where could he have gone? How on earth could he have disappeared into thin air? Ted and his older sister, Kat, become sleuthing partners, since the police are having no luck. Despite their prickly relationship, they overcome their differences to follow a trail of clues across London in a desperate bid to find their cousin. And ultimately it comes down to Ted, whose brain works in its own very unique way, to find the key to the mystery. This is an unput-downable spine-tingling thriller–a race against time.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* The facts seem simple enough. While their mothers have coffee, Ted and his older sister, Kat, and their cousin, Salim, wait in a queue to ride the London Eye, an observation wheel that allows those locked in the glass-and-steel capsules to see 25 miles in every direction. A stranger from the front of the line offers one free ticket, and since Salim is the visitor, stopping in London before moving with his mum to New York, he takes it. Ted and Kat see him enter the capsule and follow his ride, but to their shock, he doesn’t exit with his fellow riders. This book, very different from Dowd’s searing A Swift Pure Cry (2007),  is much more than a taut mystery. In Ted, Dowd offers a complex young hero, whose “funny brain . . .  runs on a different operating system” (seemingly Asperger’s Syndrome) and who is obsessed with shipping forecasts and with his inability to connect well with others. After several long days have passed with no sign of Salim, Ted must use the skills he has and overcome some of his personal challenges to find his cousin. Everything rings true here, the family relationships, the quirky connections of Ted’s mental circuitry, and, perhaps most surprisingly, the mystery. So often the mechanics of mystery don’t bear close scrutiny, but that’s not so here. A page turner with heft. Grades 5-8. --Ilene Cooper

Review

Starred review, Publishers Weekly, December 3, 2007:
"Grabs readers from the beginning and doesn't let go."

Starred review, Booklist, January 1, 2008:
“Everything rings true here, the family relationships, the quirky connections of
Ted’s mental circuitry, and, perhaps most surprisingly, the mystery.”

Starred review, Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2007:
“This is a well-constructed puzzle, and mystery lovers will delight in connecting the clues.”

Starred review, School Library Journal, February 2008:
“A dense mystery tied together with fully fleshed out characters and a unique narrator.”

Starred review, The Horn Book, May/June 2008:
“The best mysteries have at their centers gifted but very human sleuths—their abilities balanced by equally significant flaws or idiosyncrasies. This one is no exception.”

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: David Fickling Books; First American Edition edition (February 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375849769
• ISBN-13: 978-0375849763
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 1.1 x 7.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #714,409 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too, March 4, 2008

By 

TeensReadToo "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The London Eye Mystery (Hardcover)

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"

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A satisfying mystery powered by changing personal relationships., April 4, 2008

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The London Eye Mystery (Hardcover)

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.

18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Richie's Picks: THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY, April 3, 2008

By 

Richie Partington "Richie's Picks" (Sebastopol, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The London Eye Mystery (Hardcover)

"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.