School Library Journal Review: /* Starred Review */
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).—Caitlin Augusta, The Darien Library, CT --Caitlin Augusta (Reviewed February 1, 2008) (School Library Journal, vol 54, issue 2, p113)

Publishers Weekly Review: /* Starred Review */
A 12-year-old Londoner with something like Asperger's syndrome narrates this page-turner, which grabs readers from the beginning and doesn't let go. As Ted and his older sister Katrina watch, their visiting cousin Salim boards a “pod” for a ride on the London Eye, a towering tourist attraction with a 360-degree view of the city—but unlike his fellow passengers, Salim never comes down. He has vanished. At the outset Ted explains that he has cracked the case: “Having a funny brain that runs on a different operating system from other people's helped me to figure out what happened.” The tension lies in the implicit challenge to solve the mystery ahead of Ted, who turns his intense observational powers on the known facts, transforming his unnamed disability into an investigative tool while the adults' emotions engulf them. Dowd ratchets up the stakes repeatedly: is a boy in the morgue Salim? Has he drowned? Been kidnapped? Katrina and Ted work together to solve the puzzle, developing new respect for each other. The author wryly locates the humor as Ted wrangles with his symptoms (learning to lie represents progress) but also allows Ted an ample measure of grace. Comparisons to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time are inevitable—this release was delayed when Mark Haddon's book (from the same publisher) became a bestseller—but Dowd makes clearer overtures to younger readers. Just as impressive as Dowd's recent debut, A Swift Pure Cry , and fresh cause to mourn her premature death this year. Ages 8-12. (Feb.) --Staff (Reviewed December 3, 2007) (Publishers Weekly, vol 254, issue 48, p70)

Kirkus Reviews
/* Starred Review */ When Ted's cousin Salim visits London, he insists on riding "The London Eye," an immense observation wheel. A stranger gives Salim a free ticket; Salim enters a passenger capsule; 30 minutes later, when the capsule returns from its rotation, Salim has vanished. What follows is an intricate mystery, related from the unique point of view of 12-year-old Ted, who has Asperger's Syndrome. Ted is a brilliant but literal thinker who sees things in things in terms of mathematical probabilities. His brain, though differently wired, is as efficient as a computer. It is precisely the logical mind needed to solve the mystery, and it saves Salim's life. This is a well-constructed puzzle, and mystery lovers will delight in connecting the clues, but what makes this a riveting read is Ted's voice. He is bright, honest, brave and very funny about his "syndrome" (his teacher has given him a cartoon code for recognizing the five basic emotions). The message, grippingly delivered, is that kids, even differently abled ones, are worth paying attention to. (Fiction. 9-14) (Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2007)

Subject Headings:Twelve-year-old boys
Brothers and sisters
Cousins
Asperger's syndrome
Asperger's syndrome children
Asperger's syndrome patients
Missing children
Impatience in girls
Cooperation in children
Cooperation
London, England
England
Mystery stories
Irish-American fiction

Information from Novelist

Reviewed by Sally Kruger aka "Readingjunky" for TeensReadToo.com

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. ( )

This book is so different from Bog Child, but equally good. Ted has Asberger's Syndrome and lives with his family in London. His aunt and cousin come to visit on their move to New York, and the cousin, Salim, really wants to go up in the London Eye. When he does, he disappears. Ted and his older sister Kat try to solve the mystery, but there are successes and challenges due to Ted's condition. For instance, he can't read body language, but sometimes words people say will trigger something in him that gives him a clue. The novel is told through Ted' voice, which makes the book very interesting. It's a pity Dowd has died - her books are so diverse, but rewarding. I would have loved to have read another book in Ted's voice. ( )

An excellent read that keeps you gripped to the end. How did Salim disappear from a pod on the London Eye? Read it and find out. The mystery is solved by Ted, who suffers from Asperger's syndrome, but that doesn't stop him from analysing the clues and finding out what really happened to his cousin. ( )

Richie's Picks: THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY by Siobhan Dowd, RH/David Fickling Books, February 2008, 324p. ISBN: 978-0-375-84976-3

"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--'"

"Walking thru that door
Outside we came
Nowhere at all
Perhaps the answers here
Not there anymore" -- Moody Blues, "House of Four Doors"

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.

Richie Partington, MLIS
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