Well, today we will discuss another children’s mystery novel. The novel that I have chosen to discuss is “The London Eye Mystery”. This is an English novel written by Siobhan Dowd. The novel was initially published in 2007. The whole story revolves around a boy “Ted” who resolves the mystery of how his cousin got disappeared from a sealed capsule in London Eye. The interesting thing about the story is the boy “TED” has Asperger Syndrome. The novel gained immense popularity and has won six awards. Let’s discuss the novel.
The story begins with the scene when Aunt Gloria visits Ted family with her son, Salim. Salim is of same age as Ted. Ted has confirmed Asperger syndrome but the Asperger syndrome of Salim is not confirmed. As the people with Asperger syndrome have strong fascinations, Ted has fascinations about whether while Salim has great fascinations about high buildings.
Salim especially loves and feels highly fascinated by the old barrack buildings located on the same street where Ted’s home is located. So Salim, Ted and his elder sister Kat decided to visit London Eye. There in the London eye, a stranger came to three of them and gave them a ticket for Eye. The stranger pretended that he is afraid of Eye riding, that’s why hegavehis ticket to them. Ted and his sister decided to give the ticket to Salim as he has never had a chance to ride on London eye. Salim boards the eye and wave hands at his cousins as the Eye moves upward. After half an hour, the eye capsule in which Salim was riding landed. Ted and Kat moves towards the capsule to collect Salim but could not find him.
When Ted’s mother and Aunt Gloria get to know about the disappearance of Salim, they became really angry and scolded Kat why she let Salimaccepted ticket from the stranger. Ted and Kat both were also very worried. They decided to examine Salim’scamera so as they may get some clue from the photographs. The situation became highly critical when the Ted’s family received a call from police informing that a boy of Salim’sage is found dead. The family got really worried. Teds father immediately reached the hospital to identify the dead body. Thanks God, it was not Salim.
Next day, Ted’s father got the photographs developed. They examine all the photographs very carefully in search of a clue. They could not find anything significant except the stranger in background of one of the photograph. With the help of words “online security” written on the T-shirt of stranger, Ted and Kat succeeded in tracing him. But he simply denied any link with the matter.
Ted finally figured out that Salimhimself managed to escape the capsule. He called the police. The police came with Marcus, Salim’sfriend, who admitted that he has helped Salim in escaping. Marcus told that last time he saw Salim at Euston London Underground stations. As Ted was aware of Salim’s fascination about old barracks building, he immediately inferred that Salim would be in old barracks. Finally, they find the Salim in old barracks.
The family was happy to get Salim back. Salim agrees to fly back to New York with Aunt Gloria.