Award-winning writer Brian Freeman isn’t too sorry he and his wife, Marcia, are isolating in their Woodbury home. Freeman, who writes psychological thrillers, needed the time to finish the last of three 2020 projects.
In July his first book in Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne series will be published. September brings a new thriller featuring Minnesota detective Jonathan Stride. A stand-alone novel, nearing completion, will be published next February. Besides the Stride books, Freeman writes separate series featuring Cab Bolton and Frost Easton, and he’s written six stand-alone novels.
Freeman’s first Stride thriller, “Immoral,” won the Mystery Writers International Macavity award for best first novel. “Spilled Blood,” a 2013 stand-alone, won an award for best novel from the International Thriller Writers organization, and “The Voice Inside,” from the Frost Easton series, won a Minnesota Book Award. His books have sold in 46 countries (he’s especially popular in Europe) and have been translated into 22 languages.
We talked with the 57-year-old writer about his busy year and his new books.
“THE BOURNE EVOLUTION” (Putnam, on sale July 28)
“I really enjoyed writing this book, with these adrenaline-fueled action scenes,” Freeman says of his international spy thriller featuring iconic Jason Bourne.
Freeman doesn’t seem daunted by taking over a character beloved by millions of readers worldwide, a character for whom two previous authors have invented a mythos, not to mention four films starring Matt Damon as Bourne.
Bourne, an enigmatic man who has dissociative amnesia, was introduced by Robert Ludlum in “The Bourne Identity” in 1980, followed by “The Bourne Supremacy,” and “The Bourne Ultimatum.” When Ludlum moved on to other books, the franchise was taken over by Eric Van Lustbader, who wrote 11 more Bourne thrillers. In 2018 Van Lustbader, too, wanted to do other projects. So the Ludlum estate was looking for a new author.
“About 20 months ago I got a call from my agent in New York,” Freeman recalls. “They were looking for someone to take over the series and did I want to throw my hat in the ring? I said I would love it. I’ve been a Ludlum fan my whole life. ‘The Bourne Identity’ is one of my all-time favorite thrillers. I’ve read it so many times since it first came out I felt I could drop right into Jason’s world. After several months of silence I got a call that Putnam wanted me to write Bourne. I called the editor, talked about my vision of what I would do, mapped out a plot concept, and we were off to the races. When the book was done, the Ludlum family literally did not want to change a single word. That was a high honor.”
The explosive opening of “The Bourne Evolution” places Jason and his girfriend at a festival where she is killed during a mass shooting. Bourne believes Treadstone — the agency that made him who he is — was behind the murder. When a congresswoman is assassinated, Bourne is framed for the crime and is hunted by his old comrades at Treadstone as well as a global cabal of high-tech billionaires who hired him to find out about the mysterious Medusa group that wants to take over the world through electronic devices that change behavior.
Freeman says “The Bourne Evolution” is pretty much a stand-alone that has nothing to do with the books Eric Van Lustbader wrote.
“I was trying to go back to Ludlum’s original vision, the qualities of this iconic hero,” he says. “I tried to capture the fundamental aspect of Bourne as a hero who is injured and loses his identity, with no sense of what kind of man he is, killer or moral man. That moral ambiguity drives the whole character and what I wanted to recapture in this book.”
“Early reviews are giving “The Bourne Evolution” thumbs-up. Publishers Weekly: “Freeman has a firm grasp of Bourne’s tangled background, plus the skills to keep the action front and center. Bourne fans will hope for an encore from this talented author.”
“FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND” (Black Stone Publishing, Sept. 22) and Stride on the small screen.
Freeman celebrates Jonathan Stride’s 15th anniversary with “Funeral for a Friend,” 12th in this popular series about a Duluth-based detective that began in 2005 with “Immoral.”
In “Funeral for a Friend,” Stride’s best friend makes a death bed confession that he protected Stride by covering up a murder. When the police dig up the friend’s yard, they find a body with a bullet hole in its skull. The man had been presumed dead in a swimming hole, but now it’s a murder case and Stride is the primary suspect.
Freeman has never wavered from the what he told the Pioneer Press when his first book was published: “I am not fond of books about emotionless serial killers. I hope I write thrillers that are emotionally rounded, reaching a denouement with no artificial solution, a strong sense of place and characters readers genuinely like.”
Stride’s fans will be happy to know that our hero might be headed for television. “The Burying Place,” fifth in the Stride books, is the impetus for a possible new thriller drama series.
“AMC commissioned a pilot script,” Freeman reveals. “Marcia and I have been working on this for two years. It’s been hard to keep it quiet.”
The idea came from Angela Bromstad, former president of NBC Universal, who was born in Grand Rapids, Minn. She read ‘The Burying Place,’ set in Duluth and Grand Rapids, and loved it.
“Angela felt the Midwest had been missed in TV crime shows,” Freeman says. “So much focus is on the West Coast or East Coast. She was looking for a thriller series that would embrace qualities of the Midwest. Angela has a production company with David Semel (“Goliath”), one of the top TV directors in Hollywood with an incredible track record for pilots that get turned into series. I talked several times to lead writer Kelly Masterson (“Killing Kennedy”). He’s read and loved all the Stride novels and is working hard to be true to the book and series, But this is Hollywood, so 18 million things can change along the way.”
STILL TO COME
“This is the most daring and unusual thriller I’ve written,” Freeman says of the stand-alone novel to be published next year. “It’s classic Brian Freeman but very different from the past.”
Although most attention is paid to Freeman’s series, he says his standalones are increasingly popular. He points to his most recent, “Thief River Falls,” about a Minnesota writer whose books are coming to life.
” ‘Thief River Falls’ has had an amazing run,” he says. “It’s an emotional book that was received the way I’d hoped. Readers said they were crying as they read the last chapters. Rest assured, I was crying as I wrote them.”
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