The London Eye Mystery

by Siobhan Dowd

When Ted’s teenage cousin Salim disappears between the time he got on the giant... read more

When Ted’s teenage cousin Salim disappears between the time he got on the giant ferris wheel known as the London Eye and the time the passengers in the car in which he was riding disembark, it’s a mystery that baffles everyone from his family to the police. As hours pass and unease grows for Salim’s safety, Ted begins to make a list of possible answers, from the logical to the improbable to the seemingly impossible. Only his older sister, Kat, is willing to listen—something highly unusual, as she generally is far too involved in her own life to pay him much attention, but this is a highly unusual circumstance. Ted, who has Asperger’s syndrome, has spent a lot of time practicing social interactions to ease his way in the world, but he’s a master at seeing details and patterns and things out of place, and considering their meaning. He needs both the skills that come to him naturally and the ones he works so hard to master as he and Kat try to figure out what happened to Salim. The dynamics of Ted’s family—both immediate and extended—are funny, touching, and wholly believeable, a dimension all the more critical as they also turn out to be at the heart of Siobhan Dowd’s engaging and intriguing mystery. (Ages 10–14)

© Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2009

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