Michele E Gwynn

The Making of Herman Faust Michele E Gwynn

When the walls come tumbling down...



Herman Faust is the no-nonsense Director of the LandesKriminalamt (LKA), and long-time friend of Kommissar Joseph Heinz. His career spans thirty years, and he is now on the cusp of retirement. Although usually cool and in control, a man of dry wit, it wasn't always so for Faust. With experience, came wisdom, hard won wisdom for which he paid a very high price during the last days of the cold war.


1988, Near the end of the Cold War: For rookie officer Herman Faust, a routine, late night traffic stop turns into the apprehension of a high priority defector, one with ties to the Soviet bio-weapons program Obolensk. After bringing the woman and her brother in for questioning, the man disappears, and the woman is found inside her holding cell...dead. When the American CIA intervenes, Faust begins receiving anonymous calls threatening his family, and his own life. As clues come to light linking his superior, Captain Rolf Rheinhardt, to the dead woman, and to a Soviet plot to launch a biological weapon on the American Embassy, Faust knows he must risk all to stop the deadly pathogen from being released on innocent civilians. The stability of West Berlin is at risk, and if Faust fails to solve the case, it will be war! This is his story. This is the making of Herman Faust.

***Page Turner Awards 2021 Shortlist Finalist for the Book Award and Screenplay (Book Adaptation Needed) categories

Review: "Where the Checkpoint Series All Began... In this prequel to her Checkpoint, Berlin Detective Series, Michele E. Gwynn has spun a heart-pounding tale of Cold War intrigue...artfully recalling a darker age of Russian agents and secret plots that, until recently, we thought was gone forever with the fall of the Berlin Wall. I loved the suspense, the intrigue and the way Gwynn builds the relationships between Faust, his wife and the stalwart Joseph Heinz and I heartily recommend it to any fan of police stories and Cold War spy novels." Aurora Dawn