Sarah Reviews… The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd

Title: The London Eye Mystery

Author: Siobhan Down

Publisher: David Fickling Books

Publication Date: 7^th June 2007

Format: eBook

About the book:

Monday, 24 May, 11.32 a.m. Ted and Kat watch their cousin Salim get on board the London Eye. He turns and waves and the pod rises from the ground.

Monday, 24 May, 12.02 p.m. The pod lands and the doors open. People exit in all shapes and sizes – but where is Salim?

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 runs on its own unique operating system, to find the key to the mystery.

What I Thought:

Ted lives with his parents and his sister Kat in their own corner of London. One summer his aunt brings their cousin, Salim, to visit before they are due to fly out to America to start a new life in New York. On a day trip to the London Eye Salim heads into a capsule on his own, and when it reaches the bottom again he’s some how vanished from inside. The book follows Ted and Kat as they attempt to understand what has happened and find Salim.

I found The London Eye Mystery to be an interesting read, I thought the plot was very well paced, and I enjoyed following Kat and Ted as they tried to solve the mystery on their own. I thought the conclusion was really satisfying and explained how it happened, tying all the clues together.

Ted is without a doubt the highlight of the story. He has Aspergers and describes his brain as running on a different operating system to others. I can’t comment on how accurate the representation is however as I’m not familiar enough with the characteristics. I will say I very much enjoyed viewing the world through Ted’s eyes and gaining understanding of the situation as he sees it.

Kat definitely grew on me, sometimes I felt she was a little dismissive of Ted, but I think that just demonstrated a fairly normal sibling relationship where the older becomes a little dismissive of the younger. I was pleased to see her become a little more appreciative of her brother as the story progressed though.

Final Thoughts

I  wanted to love this book, ever since I was a child I have adored mysteries, it’s very much my genre but although I enjoyed it, and really liked Ted, I just didn’t love it as much as I wanted to. I’d definitely still recommend it though, and I’ll be looking up the sequel written by Robin Stevens

Want to buy it?

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As always if you’ve read the book let me know what you thought! If you’ve not read it yet will my review convince you to pick it up?