Germany 1999. 10yr old Pia is the last person to see Katharina Linden alive. She is determined to investigate... and then the next girl goes missing.

 A beautifully written book set in Germany just before the millennium. Young girls are going missing and 10yr Pia with her friend, Stefan, decide to solve the riddle, even if it means coming up against ghosts and ghouls.. not to mention the many 'colourful' adults in the town. The prose is lyrical and gorgeous, with some truly excellent turns of phrase (one sticks in my mind: 'The domestic equivalent of wasting police time'), the humour is witty and funny, the many characters are wonderfully drawn out and the German setting is strong and real. The mystery plot is good, if not totally unique, but it does take a long time to go anywhere (due to the style of writing i.e. very detailed). A lot of supernatural angles are hinted at, but ultimately the missing girls have been taken and killed by a man. I believe the tales of ghosts and legends told throughout are ways for 10yr Pia to try and understand the horrors of the adult world. The book also contains arguing parents who ultimately divorce, and school-yard bulling about the unfortunate and bizarre death of her grandmother.

I do have a slight concern with this book, however, over the audience targeting. I simply do not know who it is for? Technically it is a Puffin 'Spine-Breaker', so the publisher thinks it is a teenage book, but I think ten -year-old Pia is too babyish for teens to identify with and the dark subject matter of child abduction is simply not suitable for anyone younger. The prose, although beautiful, is very sophisticated, putting the book further out of reach for less bookish teens. And it is written by the adult Pia 'remembering' what happened – I believe another turn-off for teens. So, I'm really not sure who I would recommend this book to, except rather sophisticated older teens ... oh, and adults of course.

2009-04-14