Stephan Leenen

The Spreenebel series

Do you also love captivating crime novels? Stories that get under your skin and make you sink into their world, making you forget everything around you? Authentic, full of emotion and with unexpected shocking moments and twists? Writing such books is my passion and my goal.

In the meantime, I have published six independent crime stories that focus on the Berlin investigator duo Britt Bredehorst and Ralf Ziether. Each story is a self-contained case that always offers suspense, sometimes dark abysses and occasionally a pinch of spookyness. Britt embodies the tough criminalist, while Ralf hides his fears behind a harsh façade. But those who know my books know that this will not go well for long. When I'm working on a new story, I sometimes wonder what unpredictable entanglements I'm going to lead them into this time. What's more, my two investigators have taken on more of a life of their own with each new story. While I have a clear idea of how the plot might unfold when writing the novels, Britt and Ralf often react very differently than I had planned. They lead a life of their own in my head, so to speak, in my shared thoughts.

The Spreenebel series

Spreenebel was a perfect metaphor for a crime novel for me. And so the river and its banks appear again and again in my Berlin crime novels.

The nights were already very cool, especially at the water. The river gave off the heat stored during the day as rising damp, a wet haze that seemed to seek the proximity of the people standing on the bank, crept coolly under their jackets and rose in their trouser legs. Ziether shivered in the cold light of the spotlights that bathed the narrow jetty in bright white light, where men in white overalls busily searched every inch of the wooden planks for traces. (Dreckiges Geld)

Unfortunately, my novels are only available in German. But I'm looking forward to your feedback.