Ghosts and crime for middle grade readers by Finland’s rising crime queen – Runeberg Junior Prize winner 2019!
Author: Eva Frantz
Swedish original: Hallonbacken
Publisher: Schildts & Söderströms, 2018
Genre: middle-grade suspense/mystery
Number of pages: 150 pp.
Reading material: Swedish original, Finnish translation, English translation, English synopsis
Rights sold: Bulgaria, Perseus; Denmark, ABC forlag; World English, Pushkin Press; Lithuania, Terra Publica; Norway, Mangschou; Russia, Eksmo; Slovenia, KUD Sodobnost; World Spanish, Fondo de Cultura
Raspberry Hill is a sanatorium in the middle of the healing countryside, where city dwellers with lung diseases end up. Many of the child patients treated there are from poor families – like Stina. She’s lived on Seaman Street in southern Helsinki in a small room with her five siblings and the mother since the father died in the war, and now she is very sick.
The sanatorium feels like a castle to Stina. It is vast and full of long corridors and echoes. It is also a very lonely place, until one day Stina meets Ruben. The boy starts turning up when they should be sleeping, taking her on nightly expeditions to forbidden parts of the building – like the eastern wing, which has recently burned down.
Little by little Stina starts to realize that everything is not quite right in the sanatorium. Why isn’t her mother writing back to her? Why do the nurses seem so afraid? What really happened in the fire? And what is Ruben trying to warn her about?
The Mystery of Raspberry Hill is crime author Eva Frantz’s first children’s book – a suspenseful horror story for middle grade readers. It starts a series of stand-alone horror novels set in early 20th century that take their young readers on a journey back in time. The book was awarded Runeberg Junior Prize in 2019.
“Eva Frantz’s book has all the right elements that a page-turner for an avid young readership should have: a proper suspenseful plot and supernatural twists.”
– Hufvudstadsbladet newspaper
“A perfect autumn read for the courageous ones who are not afraid of ghosts or other mysterious characters.”
– Yle Internytt
“Frantz’s description of how the ordinary things distort and turn into something totally else in Stina’s imagination is credible. Raspberry Hill is not the only big building with intriguing spots where children end up having adventures. In addition to Hogwarts eg. the mysterious houses and castle ruins that the children in Enid Blyton’s novels explored come to mind. And thinking even more thematically, there is something from even Astrid Lindgren’s sick, orphan or generally lonely children who end up in breathtaking adventures. Thus, Frantz relies on classic ingredients but does it with a style and suspense that hold the reader tightly in their grip till the last pages.”
– Västra Nyland newspaper
Also available:
The Secret of Helmersbruk Manor (2021)
Queen of the Night (2021)
Out of the Game (2020)
The Eighth Maiden (2018)
The Blue Villa (2017)
Summer Isle (2016)
About the author:
Eva Frantz