The London Eye Mystery
is a great book for two reasons: the mystery is quite compelling and is solved in a very satisfying way, and the narrator, Ted, has Asperger's -- a milder form of autism. Ted and his sister Kat take their cousin, Salim, to ride on the London Eye (the giant Ferris wheel in the middle of London). They watch him enter a pod, which then rises into the air. Thirty minutes later, the pod comes back down, but Salim is not in it. With Ted and Kat feelng responsible, they must put their heads together to solve the mystery. Ted's head is "wired differently" so he thinks differently from others, and Kat is a little bit impatient, but they manage to come up with and test nine theories of what happened to Salim. In the end, it is Ted's method of thinking that allows him to crack the case and end up a hero. I'm now reading another book by Siobhan Dowd, Bog Child. She is a very good writer; unfortunately, she died at the age of 47 in 2007 from cancer. She had published two books prior to her death and two afterwards.
This is a great book to introduce people to modern-day London but also to the inner workings of someone with Asperger's. Dowd makes Ted an engaging character who is often flummoxed by the expressions people use (he thinks that making small talk means using words with one syllable) and his fascination with the weather actually helps him to think about Salim's disappearance in a way that makes sense to him.
The London Eye Mystery, 2007, NY: Random House
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