The Children of Hamelin - Jannie Ireland - ★★★.½

AUTHOR: Jannie Ireland

GENRE: Contemporary Mystery

PUBLICATION DATE: March 18, 2025

RATING: 3.5 stars

In a Nutshell: What happened AFTER the story of ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’? This contemporary mystery attempts to answer that question. A mindblowing plot that was perhaps a tad too ambitious. A little incongruence between the writing approach and my reading preferences, but the storyline was still compelling enough to keep me hooked till the end. I insist upon a sequel!

Plot Preview:

1284: The children of Hamelin were lured into the mountains by a mysterious disgruntled piper. None of them were ever seen again by their loved ones.

After many centuries, some children wake up inside a cave with hardly any memory of how they reached there. Stunned by their surroundings, they decide to go back home. But home is no longer what it was.

2011. Twenty-two-year-old Erika, a newly-trained nurse, has just begun working at the Koppenberg Klinik, a renowned psychiatric clinic. She is put in charge of a special secret department, where inmates deemed to be potentially dangerous are kept in isolation. However, she soon discovers that their origin story sounds bizarre and impossible. How can they claim to be the children from the ancient legend of the Pied Piper? What’s the truth behind these inmates’ assertions? Can Erika risk her job for such an irrational investigation?

The story comes to us mainly from the 2011 timeline from multiple third-person perspectives. There are some third-person interludes from the 1978 timeline as well.

PSA: The blurb is a bit misleading and reveals way too much, as does the tagline.

'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' is one of the most memorable folk tales I had read in my childhood. I always felt sorry for poor Willy who was the only child left behind (in my comic book adaptation) as he was lame and couldn’t catch up with the others. (I have since learnt that the number of children left behind varies depending on the adaptation.)

When I saw the title and the blurb of this book, I knew I HAD to get my hands on this one. It’s not exactly a retelling; more like an extension of the folk tale. The book kept me satisfied with the plot but I'm not too happy with the editing. 

Bookish Yays:

🎺 The prologue coming from 1284: perfect to start off this troubling story. It would help if you already know the story of the Pied Piper, but just in case you don’t, the author has provided a helpful recap at the start.

🎺 The premise of this book just blew me away. I love the concept of investigating what might have happened to the children of Hamelin. This isn't the first book to tackle the idea, but it’s still a addition to the list.

🎺 The way a magical folk tale has been twisted into this mildly supernatural, psychological story with sprinkles of time travel – WOW!

🎺 Katrin (one of the inmates at the clinic) – the best character of this story, and the only one who is sketched properly.

🎺 Katrin is crippled (possibly the equivalent of Willy from my book) but her leg is never the sole focus of her arc. I love how her personality gets more prominence than her disability.

🎺 Some truly creepy and disturbing scenes. (Not going into spoilers.)

🎺 I love books that make me wonder what I would have done in the character’s place. This plot offered this point of contemplation from the POV of many characters.

🎺 Quite twisty, with a few truly surprising developments.

🎺 A quick pace despite the multi-threaded storyline.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

♫ The other main and secondary characters, especially Erika, Peter (Erika’s boyfriend) and Doctor Morgan who runs the clinic, are really interesting, but there is no depth to them. We know only as much as is needed, with other details revealed only when and to the extent necessary. We don’t even know how Peter and Erika got together and how long they’ve been together. There’s also hardly anything about the other inmates of the clinic. For a story so focussed on the clinic, this is a major gap.

♫ I thought the 1284-to-modern-day leap indicated a time-travel plot. But the book is not at all about time travel. This might disappoint those looking for a sci-fi angle, but I am happy with the supernatural tilt. That said, the supposed “time travel” from 1284 to 1978, though bizarre and compelling, is left unexplained. I wish we had more detailing on this.

♫ The barebones writing, especially but not only in the initial chapters. The overall story feels too rushed as there’s a lot happening off the page. Descriptions are minimal (and random – a couple of locations get long descriptions; others get nothing at all), backstories are minimal, non-core scenes are minimal, conversations are restricted to the essential and often cut abruptly, time periods and scenes often jump ahead without notice: all this with very few exceptions. Basically, loads of telling with not much of an immersive feel. It helps that the plot is powerful, else I might have struggled to keep my focus. This book deserves better editing.

♫ The book straddles a whole load of genres but to varied degrees. The suspense, mystery, and psychological elements are the best tackled. But the supernatural and time travel elements needed more focus. The final few chapters bring in a new genre, which is the most rushed and least satisfying.

♫ The ending is a little dragged out, but the epilogue is chilling. I want a sequel!

Bookish Nays:

🐀 The tagline on the cover – “The Piper never left…” – is such a big spoiler, and a disappointing one at that! I spent most of the book waiting for the Piper to return, but the actual reappearance was just not enough to justify that claim.

🐀 The original concept is also linked to the modern world in a couple of scenes, but this is barely developed and hence feels disjointed. As this ends up a vital part of the story, it should have been given more page space, but it is the weakest subplot of the book.

 

🐀 There are many things left unclarified at the end, even beyond what I mentioned above.
 

All in all, this is one heck of a plot that would have worked wonders in the hands of a more experienced writer. For a debut novelist, it probably became a bit too unwieldy to do justice to all the subplots. But there’s no denying the creativity and the intricacy of this storyline. 

Despite my mixed feelings about the writing and the character development, I’ll still recommend this book. There are some books you read for the prose and some you read only for the plot. This is in the second category. With a round of strict editing, it would have delivered a whammy.

Recommended to those who can enjoy a good story without bothering much about writing techniques or character development. This IS a good story, no denying that!

3.5 stars, rounding up wherever applicable for the creativity.

My thanks to Bloodhound Books for a complimentary copy of “The Children of Hamelin”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.