Chapter 38

Kat and Ted try to mentally retrace Salim’s steps from Euston and conclude he may have gone into the empty tower block and been locked in by mistake.

Chapter 39

Salim is found in the tower block.

Chapter 40

Salim asks Ted and Kat how they found him, and tells them how he got into the tower block, and about his time trapped there. He decides to move to New York with Aunt Gloria.

Chapter 41

Rashid, Salim and Aunt Gloria leave, and Ted and Kat are rewarded for their help.

LESSON 1

Focus:Cover and Chapter 1

First impressions

Learning outcomes

Students will be able to:

Share impressions about the novel based on the cover and blurb

Make predictions about the genre and text

Infer and deduce information from the text

Engage

Distribute copies of the novel and Reading Guide to students and ask them to look at the cover of the novel and read the blurb at the back of the book. Then ask them to speculate what genre of fiction the book might fall into (mystery/detective/crime fiction) using evidence from the cover. (Remind them that ‘genre’ is a style of writing or art, if necessary.)

What expectations do students have of this genre? Ask them to think of books, films and television shows that they have seen and try to come up with some of the features of crime fiction. They could use the opinions on page 4 of the Reading Guide to get started.

You could also introduce students to the term ‘locked room mystery’, a sub-genre of detective fiction in which a crime is committed under impossible circumstances, typically including a scene that none of the suspects could have entered or left. Based on the evidence in the blurb, do they think The London Eye Mysterycould qualify as a locked room mystery?

Explore

Remind students that the function of a good story opening is to interest the reader and make them keep reading. Story openings can describe a character, a setting, or an event, but they will set the mood or tone for the rest of the book. Distribute WS 1a, which has the opening paragraphs from three detective stories. Ask the class to read them in turn and comment on what they learn about character, setting, event and general tone. Would they have been able to guess that these stories were all mysteries just based on their openings? What else can they infer and deduce from the extracts?

Then read Chapter 1 of The London Eye Mystery. Ask students to consider whether they think it is a successful story opening. Does it interest the reader and make them want to continue reading? What does the opening describe? What mystery is being solved? Does it appear to conform to some of the expectations they have of the mystery genre?

Transform

Remind students that a detective’s job is to gather information from witnesses and suspects and use this information to deduce how a crime was committed. To do so, they must separate facts from opinions, and as they go, they will also draw up a list of questions to answer or investigate. Explain that a reader is a little like a detective in that they are given certain clues by the writer as a story progresses, and use these clues to infer and deduce information about characters, context, etc. that allows the author to share his or her ideas with the reader. In a detective story, the reader will also use this information to unravel a mystery.

In pairs, ask students to come up with five things they can deduce from the first chapter (they should be able to back this up with textual evidence). Then ask them to come up with at least three questions that the first chapter presents, which, as a ‘reading detective’, they will need answered through the rest of the story.

This is an appropriate point to work with a guided group. WS 1bprovides guidance on the format a guided session could take.

Review and reflect

Ask students to feed back the information they have deduced as well as their lists of questions. Use these to compile a master list. Reflect with students how creating these questions in a reader’s mind builds up suspense and ‘hooks’ them into the story.

Ask the class to predict what they think might happen in the rest of the novel. They should already be able to infer from Chapter 1 that Ted solves the mystery.

Homework

Ask students to complete the exercise on page 4 of the Reading Guide, which asks them to match up famous fictional detectives with their descriptions. Students should then research one of these detectives (or another of their choice), including information about their setting, creator and most famous cases.

Worksheet 1a

Story openings

1

Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea, the boat touched Harwich and let loose a swarm of folk like flies, among whom the man we must follow was by no means conspicuous – nor wished to be. There was nothing notable about him, except a slight contrast between the holiday gaiety of his clothes and the official gravity of his face. His clothes included a slight, pale grey jacket, a white waistcoat, and a silver straw hat with a grey-blue ribbon. His lean face was dark by contrast, and ended in a curt black beard that looked Spanish and suggested an Elizabethan ruff. He was smoking a cigarette with the seriousness of an idler. There was nothing about him to indicate the fact that the grey jacket covered a loaded revolver, that the white waistcoat covered a police card, or that the straw hat covered one of the most powerful intellects in Europe. For this was Valentin himself, the head of the Paris police and the most famous investigator of the world; and he was coming from Brussels to London to make the greatest arrest of the century.

- From ‘The Innocence of Father Brown’ by GK Chesterton

2

Nancy Drew, an attractive girl of eighteen, was driving home along a country road in her new, dark-blue convertible. She had just delivered some legal papers for her father.

“It was sweet of Dad to give me this car for my birthday,” she thought. “And it’s fun to help him in his work.”

Her father, Carson Drew, a well-known lawyer in their home town of River Heights, frequently discussed puzzling aspects of cases with his blond, blue-eyed daughter.

Smiling, Nancy said to herself, “Dad depends on my intuition.”

An instant later she gasped in horror.

- From ‘The Secret of the Old Clock’ by Carolyn Keene

3

On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic. Of all these varied cases, however, I cannot recall any which presented more singular features than that which was associated with the well-known Surrey family of the Roylotts of Stoke Moran. The events in question occurred in the early days of my association with Holmes, when we were sharing rooms as bachelors in Baker Street. It is possible that I might have placed them upon record before, but a promise of secrecy was made at the time, from which I have only been freed during the last month by the untimely death of the lady to whom the pledge was given. It is perhaps as well that the facts should now come to light, for I have reasons to know that there are widespread rumours as to the death of Dr. Grimesby Roylott which tend to make the matter even more terrible than the truth.