The Children of Hamelin

by Jannie Ireland

A modern case of missing children is tied to the Pied Piper legend in this chilling supernatural mystery.
Hamelin has always had its secrets. The children taken. The songs whispered. The piper never truly gone.
1284. Hamelin, Germany
Dozens of children vanish into the mountains, lured by the hypnotic melody of a mysterious piper, never to be seen again.
Centuries later, thirty of those lost children return—silent and haunted by a strange and terrifying power.
1978.
Now, decades after the children's reappearance, nurse Erika Kramer begins work at the Koppenberg Klinik and uncovers a chilling link to the ancient legend of the Pied Piper. But the curse is far from over.
As the piper resurfaces, this time wielding the tools of a modern world, Erika must confront an unspeakable evil. The stakes are higher than ever, and she must risk everything to break the cycle before more children are lost forever.
For fans of Hamnet and The Essex Serpent, The Children of Hamelin is a haunting tale of loss, love, and the fight to reclaim what was stolen.

Genres: Historical Fiction

306 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 18, 2025

Reviews

[Rosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a Nutshell: What happened AFTER the story of ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’? This contemporary mystery attempts to answer that question. A mind-blowing 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!

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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 great 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 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.



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[Dona's Books]

DNF @ p40

Three timelines is two too many for me.

I found an accessible digital copy of THE CHILDREN OF HAMELIN by Jannie Ireland on Libby.

[Laura Doe · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting take on the folktale The Pied Piper of Hamelin. In 1978 when children emerge from a cave in Hamelin, everyone is confused, especially since the children are barefoot in the middle of winter and don’t speak German. DCI Lenau becomes involved after one of the children is hit by a car and all of the children end up in the basement of the local hospital. However, the children seem to have a mystical power… a whistle that freezes everyone around them when they all whistle it together. 33 years later, and these children have been spirited away into a psychiatric facility and everyone involved in the case presumed that they were adopted into families that love them and raised them. Erika is a newly qualified nurse who finds herself working on the ward that looks after those children, who have now matured into adults. Erika and her fiancé end up investigating more into the patients’ treatment and end up uncovering so much more than they were prepared for.
I enjoyed this book and it’s take on the folktale. It was interesting and kept me captivated and enthralled the whole way through. I held out hope for Katrin, the girl who selflessly followed the other children even though she wasn’t under the spell from The Pied Piper and hoped that she would end up with a happy ending.
The only negative I have for the book was that sometimes it felt like it had been translated from German and sometimes the wording seemed a little off. And unless you are familiar with German, one part of the book stated using the “formal form of ‘you’”, which might not make sense unless you had some knowledge of the language. Other than this, I thought that the book was really interesting and definitely captivated me from the start.

[Leanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good reading experience but a whole star lost on the ending sorry it didn't sit well with me

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A modern fairy tale. Certainly, playful and entertaining but like all good stories of this nature, oozing with menace and those hints of evil.

What is to stop you believing that the children from 1284 who followed the Pied Piper into the mountains have returned to Hamelin? Nothing. But say it too often and you may be in a secure mental hospital for the rest of your days.

Beautifully devised and crafted. This is engaging storytelling that never lets you take a breath. There is sinister element at work here that means we never feel the lead characters are safe and above suspicion. As junior nurse Erika and aspiring journalist Peter try to unravel the mystery surrounding what goes on at the Koppenberg Klinik.

I am grateful to Bloodhound Books in arranging for me to receive an advanced reading copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Always good to read a new author. Who here combines so many strands and depths to this story; clearly demonstrating her abilities and creative writing skills. A wonderful and original re-imagining of the aftermath of the Pied Piper and the lost children of Hamelin.

I found myself tense and enthralled as the author drew more out so much from a simple idea. In the process exposing so much more, political control in a conspiracy of silence. Perhaps understandable as you get into the plot, for there is little tangible evidence to allow modern society to accept this impossible ‘fiction’.

The reader shares this frustration; this futile quest for evidence, like trying to prove the existence of Santa Claus. However it is the tension and sense of impending failure that grips one and keeps you reading.

Like “Veronika Decides To Die” it is a book that questions how we treat mental health illness and challenges who if any, demonstrates normality and a sane mind. Taking on a fairy tale, the writing could have left us a feeling in a land of make belief yet the measure of this fine author is that you accept the premise of this narrative and enjoy every last page of this story.

[Eilish Ivin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Children of Hamelin had such an interesting foundation (and all the things I love!) - folklore, time travel, and the mystery of the Pied Piper.

The beginning pulled me in immediately - 13th Century Hamelin and Katrin and Trude’s story had me hooked. When they followed the Piper and suddenly found themselves in 1978, I was fascinated and excited to uncover what had happened in the time between and why they had been taken by the Piper.

However, once the story moved to the Klinik, it moved from folklore to a story of medical negligence and murder mystery. At that point, my interest started to fade. The focus veered away from the children of Hamelin and more into modern-day conspiracies.

There was also a lot of detail spent on moments that didn’t feel important to the main narrative, which made me skim through sections just to get back to the heart of the story.

Overall, there were parts I genuinely enjoyed—especially the early time-travel and historical elements. I just wish more of the story had remained focused on the mystery of the Hamelin children and their journey.

[Maresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

It ia difficult to review this book. I really liked the idea behind it, it was a great setup and I was hooked from the start.

Hwever, the execution is dragging a five star idea down to a maximum of three. It starts with the narration, that sounds often like a first draft with tons of unnecessary details (and then they went shopping to an Edeka and they bought ...) and a bit of "I did really research Germany" proof. But exactly that is it what makes it less real - this is not Germany but what an author who had never been there imagines (e.g. smelling the sea at Hamburg Hauptbahnhof). the weirdest thing is the naming of the people - the author mixes up centuries of naming traditions and naming history. No, Katrin, Trude and Martin are rather not names connected to 1287, and in the 1980s Erika and Peter were not a choice by parents for their children, so it just makes the main characters sound very old and rather unrelateable. It really put me off to get into the book, the whole narration was a half-tone off.

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book so much!

The story begins with the children of Hamelin following the pied piper into the mountains. Hundreds of years later, some of them wake up and head out of the cave and walk into town. Everything has changed as it is now the 1970s. The group of children are rounded up by the police and social services.
Fast forward to present day, the children are now adults and are locked up in a psychiatric hospital. Nurse Erika Kramer befriends Katrin, one of the original children. She begins to wonder why Katrin and the others are still locked up, and why are some of them dying in suspicious circumstances? Together with her journalist boyfriend, Erika works towards finding out the truth and putting things right.

I like stories set in psychiatric hospitals, I enjoy the idea of the patients trying to escape the clutches of evil doctors. What makes this book unique is the idea of those patients being the children of Hamelin coming back in modern day.

I recommend for fans of books like The Night Counsellor by L.K. Pang and The Other Girl by C.D. Major which are also both set in asylums.

[Northern Light · Rating 5 out of 5]

We all know the story of the pied piper of Hamelin. This is a what happened next imagining.

In a psychiatric hospital is an area where the patients are isolated and kept away from everyone else. Apparently they appeared in the town of Hamelin as children with no knowledge of where they came from.

When a new nurse starts working there she gets close to one of them who tells her a story which seems at first impossible to be true. In time though she begins to wonder if in fact the story is true

It's also a story about the conditions inside a psychiatric hospital and how patients can be treated with disdain and carelessness.

As the book develops we get inside the world of Katrin and her aim of freedom.

Will we learn the truth, what will happen to all the patients and how does this affect the nurses.

The end was as dramatic as it was unexpected. A well written novel.

I received this book for free and the views expressed are entirely my own.

[Rhian · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1284 dozens of children are led out of Hamelin into the mountain.
Seven centuries later 30 of these children emerge into a changed and confusing world. 33 years later a nurse, concerned about patients held in isolation in a secure unit in her hospit, begins to investigate.
The story moves between 1978 when the children emerge, and 2011, focusing in on one of them, Katrin, and her struggle to protect the other children and to make sense of what had happened.
It gripped me through all the twists, turns and surprises and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It ends on a cliffhanger, which I hope means a sequel is brewing.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

A retelling of the story The Pied Piper of Hamelin, this time the story is split over different timelines, the original when the children disappear and then the modern time when they reappear. Then go forward some years to when a young couple, Erika, a recently qualified Psychiatric nurse and her partner, an investigative journalist.
The story has mystery and quite a few unexpected turns. A good read.

[Carole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the idea of this book and was interested to read it.
There were parts I really enjoyed. I liked the development of the characters and their relationships. The pace of the story was good and engaging, but there were times that i just lost interest and it took me much longer than I expected to complete. I became frustrated by the writers style at times and what I felt were pointless details.
It was ok but I just didn't love it.
Thank you to Bloodhound books for my ARC copy of this novel

[Lynn Mccarthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Brilliant book i really enjoyed it.
This book follows the pied piper what happened to the children after they followed him.
This story had different time lines the time when the children disappeared and the time when they came back.
Had mystery and twists in it and i just loved it.
Recommended.

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was really unusual and caught my imagination.
The story of the Pied Piper after the children were taken and what happened in the future.
What did the modern world do or what the modern world do if they came back?
It’s a thriller and a story of people and their dark sides. But there are lots of positives too.
It was really good.

[LesleyjR · Rating 4 out of 5]

A interesting and good take on the Pied Piper of Hamelin fairytale. In 1978 a group of children wake in a cave, and make their way down to what they think is the Hamelin they left in 1248 when they followed the piper up the mountain. Believed to be suffering from mass delusions, they are incarcerated in a psychiatric unit. Compelling reading

[Nicola Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the story of the pied piper and I love a modern day take/what happened next to any fairytale but this was exceptional. I couldn't wait to pick it up to read but I didn't want it to end. Highly recommend.

[Sian Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book, which considers the fate of the children of Hamelin after they disappeared. I’d love there to be a sequel to this as I’m completely invested in the fate of the children that disappear at the end of the book.

[Emma Gregg · Rating 3 out of 5]

the writing in this was quite strange and basic (potentially translated from german?) but the story was fantastic and had me hooked.

i obviously more enjoyed the spooky aspect than the drugging aspect

[Fizzie Heseltine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this! Every page was brilliant and enthralling. I recommend this.

[Beaux · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to follow on publishing date

[Linda-Alexandra Bos · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has its suspenseful moments. I do not like the end of this book.