After months of working quietly behind the scenes, today I can finally share the news I’ve been waiting for: The echo of the defeated, the first instalment of my new, previously unpublished trilogy, has made the leap from the page to the screen.

Writing this novel was a risk for me: for the first time, told in the first person, set in Bavaria in 1955; it opens as a police procedural and ends, almost without my intending it, deep in the territory of espionage and the Cold War.

A turn that ended up confirming what my true genre really is.

That same narrative risk is what opened the door to the world of film and television. MovieBooks, led by Isabel Montes, has backed this project, and today we have the pilot episode script —in both Spanish and English— along with a complete audiovisual dossier, ready to be presented to film and TV production companies.

Leo Kessler‘s story doesn’t end with The Echo of the Defeated. The second instalment of the trilogy is already underway, and I’ll keep you posted on its progress in future posts.

Discover the project: The echo of the defeated.

Part 2 of the New Trilogy

When World War II ended, what became of the Gestapo and SD agents? Did they escape, or were they captured?

Many were tried and sentenced to death or long prison terms, but just as many went on with their careers in the new, divided Germany: East Germany (the GDR, under Soviet rule) and West Germany (the FRG, administered by the United States, Britain, and France).

Those questions were the starting point for The echo of the defeated: my first attempt at an answer, still unpublished as it awaits its evolution into the world of film and television.

But Leo Kessler’s story doesn’t stop there. Right now I’m writing the second instalment of this new trilogy, which takes him one step further, across the Soviet border, working alongside West Germany’s newly formed intelligence service (the BND) — where the Nazi past coexists with moles from the Communist regime.

Both novels share the same promise: a plot that starts out looking like a police procedural and ends up revealing the darkest face of espionage in a divided Europe.