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| photo: Kevin Jantzer | |
Brian Freeman is the author of more than 30 novels, including the Jonathan Stride series and seven novels in Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne series. He won the Thriller Award for Best Hardcover Novel and has been an Edgar finalist twice. Photograph (Blackstone, October 7, 2025) is an emotional cold-case mystery of hidden identities and startling twists.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
It's about a photograph of a little girl from decades ago. Who is she? And why have two people been killed because of her picture?
On your nightstand now:
My tastes are pretty eclectic! I just finished Ione Skye's memoir, Say Everything, and Tracy Borman's history of the British monarchy, Crown & Sceptre. Now I'm halfway through Jungle of Stone by William Carlsen, about the 1830s expedition that uncovered the Mayan ruins. When you write suspense all day, you look for something a little different at bedtime!
Favorite book when you were a child:
When I was a teenager, I'd have to say Trinity by Leon Uris, about the struggles in Ireland. It taught me so much about writing and storytelling. (A first-person novel that kills off the narrator!) But if you go further back, I was a huge fan of the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series. I read those books over and over!
Your top five authors:
I really don't like "ranking" today's authors because we have so many fantastic writers in the genre. So I'll mention a few late authors (and absolute masters) whom I miss so much: Nelson DeMille, Peter Robinson, John le Carré, Stuart Woods, and Nelson DeMille. Yes, I mention DeMille twice because he was just so darn good!
Book you've faked reading:
If I told you I'd read Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, I'd be lying. I mean, I've tried many times. No, I'm still lying. I've never tried.
Book you're an evangelist for:
I read The Magus by John Fowles as a teenager. Still one of the best novels ever. You couldn't find a more different book than my thriller Infinite and yet I explain in the acknowledgments how I was inspired by The Magus when I wrote that novel.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Believe it or not, I really don't pay much attention to covers when I buy a book. For me, it's the subject and the author. (But have you seen the cover for Photograph? Wow!)
Book you hid from your parents:
Ha, it was actually my brother's book. I found it in the attic as a kid--something called The Gold and Glory Guy by Allan Nixon. I remember absolutely nothing about it other than sex, sex, sex.
Book that changed your life:
In 1980, I was 17 years old, and I read an incredible thriller called The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum. If you'd told me back then that 40 years later(!), Jason Bourne books would be appearing with my name and Ludlum's name on the cover, I'd have thought you were crazy. But here we are.
Favorite line from a book:
"But then the mysteries began." That's from The Magus. I remembered that line for decades after I read the book.
Five books you'll never part with:
I had to downsize a lot when we moved from Minnesota to Florida. But a few books have always stayed on my shelf: The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers, The Magus by John Fowles (see above), The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (see below), Mystery of the Pirate's Ghost by Elizabeth Hoffman Honness (a children's book I can't seem to part with), and of course, my paperback copy of The Bourne Identity.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Possibly the best mystery ever written is Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles. I still reread it every year. "It's an ugly business, Watson, an ugly dangerous business!"
Your favorite book among everything you've written:
The Deep, Deep Snow and The Ursulina go hand in hand--two books that read together like one long novel. No matter what else I write in my life, I'll be proud that I gave readers those two books.