The Burying Place

You call your books “psychological suspense.” What can readers expect from a Brian Freeman novel?
My books generally revolve around crimes of passion, so the readers will find the emotions, secrets, and sexuality of the characters peeled away chapter by chapter. I’m not focused on “how” a crime gets solved as much as I am on “why” a crime took place. What was it about the pasts of these characters that drew them across a terrible line? So as you get to the final explosive twists at the end of the books, it should be a shock – but it should also feel like the last piece in the psychological puzzle. I don’t really like books where the heroes are all good, and the villains are all bad. I want my characters to have depth and flaws. You may not always agree with the moral decisions made by the police, and you may find yourself sympathizing with some of the characters who commit the crimes. But that’s what makes them feel real.

Most of your books are set in Duluth, Minnesota. Why did you choose Duluth?
I think drama is enriched by extremes. You can’t get much more extreme than Duluth! It’s a city on the shore of a huge, often violent lake, at the border of the northern wilderness, with crazy, steep streets that look as if they came straight out of San Francisco. And that’s before you talk about the bitter cold weather. You can’t escape the winter in Duluth. Much of the action in my novels takes place outdoors, and the Duluth weather often plays an important role in the plot. Weather can be as important a character as any of the people – and that’s certainly true of IN THE DARK.

Tell us about your hero, Jonathan Stride.
Stride is very much a product of the northern wilderness where he grew up. When I was creating Stride, I deliberately didn’t want a stereotypical emotionless detective. Stride struggles with his emotions, and he sometimes makes big mistakes because of them. He’s known a lot of loss, but he keeps trying – you can hear it in his name. I think that’s one of the reasons readers relate to him. He’s not a super-hero. He’s human. Readers often tell me that they like the fact that Stride doesn’t hog the stage. He’s always a key character in the novel, but his partners – and the other characters in the book – almost seem to upstage him sometimes. That’s deliberate. On the other hand, IN THE DARK is very much Stride’s book. We learn a lot about his past and what made him the man he is, and we see some of the pain and joy of his relationship with his late wife, Cindy. For readers who haven’t met Stride before, it’s a great place to start.

Your books all feature strong, conflicted women. How do you write so convincingly from a woman’s point of view?
Hmm, you’re putting me on the spot with that question! I guess I would say first that I’ve been privileged to know some interesting and complex women as friends, and I’ve learned a lot from them. That includes Marcia, my wife of twenty-five years, although I don’t imagine she’d be too happy to think that any of the women in my books were inspired by her! I also work very hard to use empathy as a writer – to really put myself in the hearts and minds of the characters as people. I do background studies on all of them before I begin the book, so that I know how they’ve been shaped – or scarred – by their pasts. That makes it easier for me to write in their voice and describe them authentically.

Readers often comment about the pace of your books – that they can’t put them down. How do you craft a book to keep readers turning the pages?
There are two big elements in the pace of a novel. The first is how you tell the story. I try to structure each chapter so that it never ends exactly the way you expect. That leaves you wanting to know what happens next. Then I usually switch venues in the following chapter, so that you have to keep reading to get back to each part of the mystery. The second element in pace is how you write the story. I edit fanatically, down to the sentence and word, so that the prose is as smooth as possible. I want my writing to carry the reader forward, not slow you down.

IN THE DARK has an unusual structure – there are elements of a “book-within-a-book.” Why did you choose that technique?
Much of the early drama of IN THE DARK takes place in the past, but not all of it is part of Stride’s own history. So I needed a way to tell the events that led up to a brutal, unsolved murder through someone else’s eyes. At the same time, I needed to bring that crime back into the immediate present, because it’s going to affect Stride’s life in the here-and-now. So I chose to create the character of a journalist who’s writing a book about a true crime, and several of the early chapters take place in that book. Of course, we don’t know how much we can trust the journalist either. She’s keeping secrets of her own.

We have to ask – no more one-word titles?
I know, shocking, isn’t it? After IMMORAL, STRIPPED, and STALKED, we decided to go a new way. I really didn’t start the series intending to use one-word titles – it just worked out that way on the early books. But I didn’t want to feel limited by those short titles forever.

You have a reputation as an author who is highly accessible to your readers. Why is that important to you?
Yes, I do make it a priority to communicate with readers. We exchange e-mails all the time. (I’m at brian@bfreemanbooks.com.) Readers can find me on Facebook and MySpace, too. For me, it’s very satisfying to hear from people who have read my books and want to talk about the plots and characters. I enjoy how real the books become to them and what an important place the characters hold in their hearts. That’s been true for me with authors I’ve enjoyed, so I love playing the same role with my own readers. I listen to what my readers say, too. After my first book [IMMORAL, an International Book of the Month] was released, a reader wrote to thank me for starting my book on page one, not on page thirteen! I’ve always remembered that note. It’s one of the reasons I make sure the prologue of my novels always grabs the reader by the throat.

What’s next for Jonathan Stride?
I’ve already completed the next Stride novel, which will be released in 2010. It’s also set in Duluth. Like IN THE DARK, this new book is twisty and emotionally intense. It’s probably the most shocking book in the series, but I love how the characters came to life on the pages. I think series readers and new readers alike will really enjoy it.