Death in Duluth

Writer brian freeman uses duluth as a backdrop for his scary thrillers

Tony Bennett

When people who aren’t from Duluth first get to spend some time in the town, they usually react to the natural beauty of the area. They look at the inland ocean that is Lake Superior and they are struck by its horizon-reaching magnificence. They go down to the harbor and watch the massive ore boats come and go. They take in the greenery if it’s summer, or the changing colors if it’s fall. Generally, people think Duluth is a pretty nice place. When Brian Freeman came to Duluth the first time, he thought it might be a pretty nice place for a murder. Maybe several.

Before you get too concerned: Brian Freeman isn’t a bloodthirsty killer. He’s a writer. These murders, they’re fictional. You see, Freeman is a Twi Cities-based novelist who has decided to make Duluth the site of a number of grisly crimes in a multi-book series that follows the police detective Jonathan Stride through numerous encounters with the darkest side of humanity.

“The question I always get up here is: ‘Why Duluth?’” Freeman says. “Which I think is a classically Minnesotan attitude.” He laughs when he says this, amused by the way the Duluthians he talks to have trouble understanding why his books aren’t set in “more interesting” places like Paris, Los Angeles, or, well, anywhere but here.

“I think Duluth is really unique in Minnesota in terms of what it offers,” Freeman says. “It has such a fascinating combination of elements. I first visited Duluth in college — my fiancé and I took a trip up north, and we drove through Duluth. I can remember thinking, even back then, boy, this would be a great place to set a suspense novel. It took me a few years, but eventually I came back around and did exactly that.”

It should be clarified — those “few years” Freeman’s talking about, they’re more like two decades. Freeman (who grew up in Chicago and San Mateo, California) attended Carleton College in Northfield, and he took that first trip through Duluth with his fiancé when he was in his late teens or early twenties. That’s a long time for a notion to stew, but Brian Freeman is a patient guy. He’s been writing books since he was a kid, honing his craft, sending in query after query to agents and publishers, hoping for his break.

“I’ve been writing my whole life,” he says. “As far back as sixth grade – that’s when I started my first murder mystery, in fact. I actually completed a full-length novel right after eighth grade. My whole family knows — this is what I’ve wanted to do for a living my entire life. I feel very privileged and grateful that I finally have a chance to do that.”

The Duluth-set Immoral was the book that finally made Freeman’s years of hard work worth it. A page-turner packed with enough kidnappings, sex, blood, and double-crossings to make Agatha Christie’s head spin, it’s the introduction to the character Jonathan Stride, who is the hero of all three of Freeman’s published novels, along with two more that have yet to be released. He’s a well-drawn, flawed hero who, when he’s introduced, is living on Park Point. Immoral even features a section where Stride is forced to wait for the Aerial Lift Bridge to come down before he can go home. The aggravation Stride feels at this will be familiar to any Northlander who’s had to sit in their car on either side of the bridge when they weren’t planning to.

Immoral was picked up after Freeman happened to target just the right literary agent after years of rejection letters. He was shocked when the wheels of his wildest dreams actually, finally, started turning.

“I got an email from the agent herself,” Freeman recalls. “She said, ‘I stayed up until one in the morning reading the book. Couldn’t put it down. I already called the UK publisher, and I said “this is the next Harlan Coben.” I want to represent you. Call me immediately.’ So, after I peeled myself off the ceiling, I called her.”

Deals were made. Within a month, Freeman had book deals in the US and UK. Within a year, he’d sold the rights to his book in seventeen different languages. Next thing Brian Freeman knew, he was touring, doing signings, getting endorsements from famous authors like Michael Connelly, and being nominated for awards. He was an author, a published author. He’d always written books, but now he could afford to quit his marketing job and devote his life to the thing he’d always wanted to focus on above all else.

Before long, there were two other Stride books out: Stripped and Stalked, and Freeman found himself with a bit of a franchise on his hands. And the whole thing is set mostly in Duluth, Minnesota. Of all places.

“The fascinating thing is, I hear from so many readers around the world who love the Duluth setting,” Freeman says. “They know nothing about the city — they just really enjoy the setting. I have readers who tell me they’ll go on to Google Earth and track down the areas in the book where the scenes are taking place so they can kinda follow through visually what’s going on.”

Freeman’s finding that his fans are taking a real shine to his fictional Duluth. In Stripped, Jonathan Stride ends up spending his time in Las Vegas, and there were readers who gently nudged Freeman to return his hero to the snowy north, next time around.

“I thought it would be fun to take a character like Stride, such a creature of the northern wilderness, and put him down in the strange, bizarre wilderness of Las Vegas,” Freeman says. “But the interesting thing was, the readers loved the book, and everyone who wrote to me said, ‘Please tell me you’re bringing the series back to Minnesota.’ Not just Minnesotans [said that]. Readers all across the country and around the world wanted to get the series back to Duluth.”

In Stalked, Freeman’s third book, they got their wish. And fans of Brian Freeman’s Duluth will get to see even more of it in the fourth Stride novel, In the Dark, set for release in March. At this point, the author has no intention to stop writing about Stride or the town his detective calls home. He’s even got some ideas about where he can go even further down the road: “I know that, despite doing books set in Duluth, I have yet to really deal with the lake, as a setting. So I’m confident there will be a lake book coming up in the next few years.”

The gleam in Brian Freeman’s eye tells you that he’s not thinking about writing a nice book about algae or fish. He’s surely got some grisly, watery fate in store for someone, and he can’t wait for you to be horrified. Nothing brings him more joy.

“I feel real fortunate. I love what I do. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Tony Bennett is a Duluth-based writer.