A FORMER Argus journalist has had his debut novel set during the Cold War thriller published.

David Young, originally from Hull, worked as a reporter for the Argus during the 80's. His debut novel Stasi Child is the first in an East Germany set series featuring gutsy protagonist Oberleutnant Karin Müller.

Müller, is a member of the People's Police, and is called to investigate a teenage girl's body found riddled with bullets at the foot of the Berlin Wall. When she arrives she realises this is a death like no other as it seems the girl was trying to escape from the West.

The evidence doesn't add up, and it soon becomes clear that the crime scene has been staged.

Mr Young won the Peter, Fraser and Dunlop City University crime writing prize in 2014 for Stasi Child which started out as a chapter for part of his masters at the university.

His interest in Cold War Germany was sparked when researching for his university thesis but developed further after he read Anna Funder’s Stasiland while on a tour of Germany with his rock band.

He researched every aspect of the Berlin wall and the hardships it caused in researching his novel, including police interviews arranged by the Berlin Police Presidency, interviews with former East Germany detectives and an interview with former Hauptmann Siegfried Schwarz who investigated the most famous crime of the era – The Crossword Puzzle Murder.

The book is now available on paperback.