The London Eye Mystery
Siobhan Dowd

Ted likes the weather, he also likes statistics and routine but his life is thrown into disarray when his Aunt Gloria and cousin Salim arrive, like a hurricane, to stay in London en-route to a new life in New York. Ted and his older sister Kat arrange to take Salim on the London Eye but although they watch him go up in a pod, he never comes down again. Salim is missing. Ted's analytical mind becomes an asset as he and Kat piece together the information surrounding their cousin's disappearance and begin to unravel the mystery. Ted is an endearing character and the focus of the story is on the solving of a mystery rather than his Asperger's syndrome. This is a beautifully written and engaging book.

Siobhan Dowd
The London Eye Mystery

Siobhan Dowd was born in London to Irish parents. She spent much of her youth in the family home in County Waterford, then Wicklow town. She spent her writing life in Oxford.

 

A Swift, Pure Cry was Siobhan’s first novel and was published by David Fickling Books in 2006, this was followed in 2007 with The London Eye Mystery and in February 2008 with the last novel that she completed – Bog Child. A final work, Solace of the Road is to be published by David Fickling Books in Spring 2009.

Siobhan Dowd passed away in August 2007 after a long fight with breast cancer. In her short career, she has been nominated for a number of awards including the 2007 Carnegie Medal and the Booktrust Teenage Prize, and went on to win the 2007 Branford Boase Award and the 2007 Bisto Eilis Dilon Award – both awards that recognise an outstanding debut, for A SWIFT PURE CRY. Siobhan’s second novel, THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY has also just won its first award – the 2007 NASEN TES Special Needs Award. In early 2007, Siobhan was nominated one of the top 25 Authors of the future as Waterstone’s celebrated their 25^th Anniversary.

 

Before she passed away, Siobhan established the The Siobhan Dowd Trust - for further information please check for forthcoming updates on Siobhan’s website www.siobhandowd.co.uk.

The aim of the trust will be to help disadvantaged children improve their skills and experience the joy of reading. It will offer financial support to: public libraries; state school libraries (especially in economically challenged areas); children in care; asylum seekers; young offenders and children with special needs.

(Page 3)

"The doors opened and the passengers came out in twos and threes. They walked off on different directions. Their faces were smiling. Their paths probably never crossed again.

But Salim wasn’t among them.

We waited for the next capsule and the next one after that. He still didn’t appear. Somewhere, somehow, in the thirty minutes of riding the Eye, in his sealed capsule, he 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 figure out what had happened."

Extract taken from The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd published by Random House