The Vanishing of Katharina Linden is a fairly slowly-paced novel with a basic plot. The only upside of the story is that it has a fairly good beginning and a surprising and unexpected ending which makes the hours of time spent reading this book slightly more worthwhile.

 The book starts fairly humorously by saying:

‘My life might have been different had I not been known as the girl whose grandmother exploded’

However, the novel goes on differently to how it started, by being much more serious.

The story follows a half-English and half-German girl called Pia who lives in a town called Bad Munstereifel, Germany.  Bad Munstereifel has a mysterious past and recently girls have been going missing from the so-called safe streets. Pia befriends a boy nicknamed Stinkstephan who, like her, is an outcast and when she takes him to visit an old friend named Herr Schiller, they start to piece together the mystery. But instead of solving the mystery, they become dangerously involved in it.

I did not enjoy this book although it was recommended to me by friends. I thought Helen Grant’s style of writing wasn’t too bad but nothing happened during the main part of the novel. Only one thing that happens in the middle of the novel that contributes to the ending. It was also quite confusing how she kept including German words which meant if you wanted to understand a conversation you had to flick to the back which I found quite annoying.

‘‘Pech gehabt!’ said Stephan with a supreme lack of sympathy’

Looking at the other side of the argument, Helen Grant did think of all the detailed clues that added up to the ending and made it into a traditional detective story with the bit about finding tracks in the snow.

‘At first I saw nothing, but then I realised I could pick out a third set of tracks leading away from the car.’

I think the murderer was very shocking, as to who it was, and it was clever how Helen Grant managed to get you to suspect lots of people throughout the book but you would never contemplate that it could be who it was. For instance, everyone in the town thinks that Herr Düster was the killer and he way he is described makes you think this too.

‘Herr Düster raised his chin a little, so that his eyes glinted darkly under the brim of his hat.’

This feeling that the reader gets towards Herr Düster is also helped by the way that Herr Schiller acts towards him.

‘Herr Schiller descended the steps. As he passed me, his elbow thumped my shoulder but I swear he didn’t notice. He approached Herr Düster like a man backing a dangerous animal into a corner, squaring his shoulders as though he wanted to herd Herr Düster away from us.’

However it turns out that Herr Düster is a good guy and Helen Grant shows Pia’s shock at her stereotype of him being so wrong.

‘This was a surprise too; somehow I had imagined him having a wild insane voice like an animal, or being like the girl in the fairytale who dropped a toad out of her mouth every time she opened it to speak. On the contrary, he actually sounded quite sane.’

Overall I didn’t enjoy this book because of the slow middle and the German words that were slipped in, but I think it had a very good ending which managed to save the novel slightly.

I give this novel 5/10.