The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd

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Caitlin Augusta, The Darien Library, CT -- School Library Journal, 2/13/2008

From SLJ February 2008

DOWD, Siobhan. The London Eye Mystery. 336p. Random/David Fickling Bks. Feb. 2008. Tr $15.99. ISBN 978-0-375-84976-3; PLB $18.99. ISBN 978-0-375-94976-0. LC number unavailable.

Gr 5-8–Ted and Kat lose their cousin Salim at the London Eye sightseeing attraction, "the largest observation wheel ever built." Given a free ticket by a stranger, Salim enters the ride, but he never emerges. Guilty about their part in the bungled outing, the siblings trace scraps of information that illuminate the boy’s disappearance. Ted, who is something of an enigma himself, narrates the story. He has a neurological cross wiring that results in an encyclopedic brain and a literal view of the world. He finds it hard to read motivations and emotions, but excels at clue tracing and deduction. Kat, his older sister, deplores his odd behaviors but relies on his analytic brain while she does the legwork. The result is a dense mystery tied together with fully fleshed out characters and a unique narrator. Good mysteries for kids are rare, and this offering does the genre proud. London Eye is the best sort, throwing out scads of clues for discerning readers to solve the mystery themselves. Add to that Ted’s literal translation of our world, his distanced view of an alien landscape of human interactions, and the ways he gains a better understanding of that world through the course of the novel, and the story is even more noteworthy. Suggest this as a read-alike to fans of Blue Balliett’s Chasing Vermeer (Scholastic, 2004) or Lauren Tarshis’s Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree (Dial, 2007).