The Mysterious Disappearance on the London Eye

The book The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd is a book about the mystery of a missing cousin. The characters include a kid named Ted, who is autistic, his mom, and his sister, Kat. They are hosting his mom’s sister, Gloria, and their cousin, Salim, for a few days. During their stay, they go to the London Eye, a type of Ferris Wheel in the center of London. Salim goes up and doesn’t come down. Or as Ted said in the introductory chapter “Somewhere, somehow, in the thirty minutes of riding the Eye, in his sealed capsule, he had vanished off the face of the earth.” 

It all starts when Ted’s mom goes with Gloria to get some coffee while Ted, Kat, and Salim go to the London Eye. They are standing in an extremely long queue when a man offers them his ticket. He says he doesn't want it anymore and he’ll give it to them for free. Of course they accept this offer to save money and skip the queue. Because it is only one ticket, Salim goes up by himself. Ted and Kat follow his pod very closely with their eyes and calculate the time he will be down. When his pod reaches the ground they cannot find him. This book is the story of how Ted and Kat find Salim. In the first chapter, Ted describes the book this way: “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.”
I enjoy books in the mystery genre and this book is in that genre but this book has something special about it. In this book Ted and Kat are going to try to find out what happened to Salim by following clues and theories they have about what happened to him. It is possible to follow the clues and attempt to solve the mystery if that is something the reader wants to do. This book is different from your typical murder mystery because the events in the story are more possible to happen in real life than a murder mystery. By this I mean the chances of somebody getting lost are far higher than somebody getting murdered.

This book is also unique because it is told in the first person by a kid whose brain works differently from others’. If you have seen or read the book/play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time then you can see the resemblance between that book and this one. They are both mysteries told in the first person and both involve a young autistic sleuth. Another interesting fact about the characters in the role of the detectives is that there are no grown-ups doing the sleuthing. It is only Ted and Kat. 

If you are someone who enjoys mysteries that are very real, this is the book for you. If you are someone who enjoys mysteries in the first person then this is the book for you. If you want an insight on what it is like to be autistic then I recommend you read this book. Once you have read and enjoyed this book, do not fret. There is a sequel!