J.F. Freedman -- a Biographical Sketch

Bestselling thriller writer J.F. Freedman grew up in the small town of Bladensburg, Prince Georges' County, Maryland, a suburban community outside of Washington, D.C. that started out as rural and working-class. When Freedman was a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received both B.A. and M.A. degrees, he wrote a short story that was well-received-he shared the undergraduate writing award with John Edgar Wideman-and he officially caught the writing bug. After college and the Army, he got a job working at Universal Studios, and began his television and film writing career there.

By 1987 Freedman had been an award-winning film and TV producer, director, and writer for over fifteen years, for such shows such as "MacGyver," "The X-Files," and "Kojak"-he won the 1974 Edgar Award for Best Television Episode for "One For The Morgue" and the Writer's Guild of America award for an episode of The Psychiatrist, entitled "Par For The Course," directed by a young Steven Spielberg (Freedman was the producer of the show). He also has several Emmy and WGA nominations. But the novel form beckoned, and, while still working fulltime in Hollywood, he began crafting his critically acclaimed first novel Against the Wind (1991).

Inspired by memories of conversations with his brother about his early career as a young lawyer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, about cases involving outlaw motorcyclists, prison riots, perjured evidence, and police corruption, Against the Wind set Freedman on a direct path for a bestsellerdom while carving out a unique niche for himself as a writer of western legal thrillers or "California P.I. novels in the tradition of Ross MacDonald and Raymond Chandler" (Library Journal).

Since the publication of Against the Wind, J.F. Freedman has published seven other internationally-acclaimed thrillers: The Obstacle Course (Penguin, 1993), House of Smoke (Viking Penguin, 1996), Key Witness (Dutton, 1997), The Disappearance (Dutton, 1998), Above the Law (Penguin, 2000), Bird's Eye View (Warner Books, 2001) and Fallen Idols (Warner Books, 2003), with some of them set in Freedman's home town of Santa Barbara and featuring prosecutor/D.A. Luke Garrison and private investigator Kate Blanchard.