In a riveting debut thriller that has drawn comparisons to masters of the genre like Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly, Brian Freeman weaves obsession, sex, and revenge into a story that grips the reader with vivid characters and shocking plot twists from the first page to the last. Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is suffering from an ugly case of déjà vu. For the second time in a year, a beautiful teenage girl has disappeared off the streets of Duluth, Minnesota—gone without a trace, like a bitter gust off Lake Superior. The two victims couldn’t be more different. First it was Kerry McGrath, bubbly, sweet sixteen. And now Rachel Deese, strange, sexually charged, a wild child. The media hounds Stride to catch a serial killer, and as the search carries him from the icy stillness of the northern woods to the erotic heat of Las Vegas, he must decide which facts are real and which are illusions. And Stride finds his own life changed forever by the secrets he uncovers. Secrets that stretch across time in a web of lies, death, and illicit desire. Secrets that are chillingly…immoral.

In this stunning follow-up to Brian Freeman's remarkable debut novel, Immoral, Detective Jonathan Stride discovers that there are only two ways to go in Las Vegas. You can hit the jackpot. Or you can get Stripped... They looked like isolated cases: a hit-and-run and a celebrity murdered during a fling with a prostitute. No one could ever imagine they'd be linked to a brutal crime in Las Vegas' steamy past—and that the race against the clock to corner a determined serial killer would stir up secrets long thought buried with the dead. As detectives Jonathan Stride and Serena Dial are called separately to investigate, they have no idea what they're stepping into: a world where desperate ambition rules and loyalties know no bounds, and where their own uncharted emotions and sexual desires will reach an explosive conclusion. Shocking, twisted, with edge-of-your-seat suspense, Stripped pushes the limits of its heroes and keeps the reader turning ever page until the last plot twist.

Lieutenant Jonathan Stride knows his partner Maggie Bei is in trouble when she reports a deadly crime on a bitter winter night. She’s obviously hiding a terrible secret, and her silence only feeds suspicion. Maggie isn’t the only one keeping secrets in Duluth. A seductive young woman has disappeared, leaving behind a stash of lurid fantasies and a cryptic message: I know who it is. Following a twisted trail, Stride uncovers a sordid web of violence and voyeurism that someone is willing to kill to keep hidden. Stride isn’t alone. His lover Serena Dial – a homicide cop turned private investigator – is chasing a blackmailer who knows all the city’s dirty secrets. Even Maggie’s. But as Stride and Serena hunt for a killer, a predator with a vicious past is hunting them – with a terrifying plan for revenge. Now every step they take to expose the truth brings them closer to a showdown amid the howling winds of a winter storm. Where survival in the blinding snow is measured in seconds. Where crimes can be buried forever.

Two young lovers. A sultry summer night. One brutal, cold-blooded murder. In this stunning, atmospheric thriller, Brian Freeman takes you deep into Detective Jonathan Stride’s complicated past. It’s the case that has haunted Stride for thirty years. During the summer after his junior year of high school, he fell in love with beautiful Cindy Starr, the girl who would become his wife. But on the Fourth of July, the same night that Jonny and Cindy cemented their love, Cindy’s older sister Laura was savagely murdered. The police suspected a vagrant of committing the crime, but no one was ever arrested, and the case was closed. Now, Laura’s best friend Tish Verdure has returned to Duluth to write a book about Laura’s death. Tish knows secrets that a lot of people would like to keep hidden, including information about Cindy that leave Stride questioning his entire past. When a young girl is found drowned in the St. Louis River and a witness to the original murder attempts suicide, Stride realizes that the violence of the past is spilling over into the present. As he unearths the explosive events that led to Laura’s murder, Stride discovers that the ripples of her death changed everyone’s lives, including his own. Can Stride put to rest the ghosts of his past, or will they devour him whole?

A stunning, clever and unputdownable thriller for fans of Harlan Coben and Michael Connelly Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is quietly recovering from injuries sustained on his latest case when a rich doctor's baby is kidnapped and his peace is shattered. As suspicion builds that the doctor may have staged the baby's disappearance, the relationship between the doctor and his wife and neighbours begins to disintegrate. Stride and his lover and partner Serena find themselves on opposite sides of the case with Stride pursuing evidence that incriminates the doctor and Serena trying to prove that the baby really was abducted. Meanwhile Stride's colleague Maggie and her headstrong young partner are tracking a man responsible for a violent crime wave in the rural areas of Duluth. There seems to be no connection between the cases - until a victim with ties to the doctor's case turns up murdered in the signature style of the Duluth killer. As the threads of both investigations converge, the chase uncovers a series of revelations that may damn the doctor - or prove his innocence.

A TWISTY PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER FROM NUMBER 1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR BRIAN FREEMAN A third woman dead in two months. And for the third time, Alison Malville isn't sure her husband was home all night. When the killer sends the usual photo of his victim to the press, she sees an item of her clothing left with this body, too. Could you believe your own husband was capable of murder? Would you turn him in?

Driving home to Minnesota one night after a long road trip, Duluth detective Jonathan Stride stops by the small Wisconsin town where his mother is buried to pay a visit to her grave. As he walks through the cemetery, a local sheriff's car pulls up and an officer steps out, pulls out his gun, and takes his own life before Stride even has time to react. After giving his statement to the police, Stride is asked to unofficially investigate the reason behind the suicide by the officer's young widow—a woman who several years earlier had become famous as the survivor of a horrific kidnapping—and to clear out of town as soon as possible by the sheriff, who is up for reelection. Against his better instincts, Stride becomes enmeshed in a gruesome and suspenseful search for a local killer who knows things no one alive should know—and who may kill again to keep it that way.

Edgar Award finalist and international bestselling author Brian Freeman brings the long-awaited return of Lieutenant Jonathan Stride to the bitter cold of Duluth, Minnesota. Sixteen-year-old Catalina Mateo shows up unannounced one night in Detective Jonathan Stride's home, dripping wet from a desperate plunge into the icy waters of Lake Superior. Her sodden clothes stained with blood, Cat spins a tale of a narrow escape from a shadowy pursuer. Stride decides to trust this girl, but his judgment may be clouded by memories of Cat's mother. Ten years earlier, Cat hid under the porch of her family home while her mother was brutally butchered by her ex-con father. Stride still blames himself for not preventing the slaughter. But is Cat telling the truth? Stride's police partner, Maggie Bei, doubts the homeless girl, who has been living rough on the streets of Duluth since her mother's death—and now sleeps with a knife hidden under her pillow. As Stride investigates Cat's story, more violence trails in the teenager's wake—and Maggie's suspicions about her deepen. Now a single question haunts the void between them: Should Stride be afraid for—or of—this terribly damaged girl?

Detective Jonathan Stride's first wife, Cindy, died of cancer eight years ago, but her ghost hangs over Stride's relationship with current lover, and fellow detective, Serena Dial. When Serena witnesses a brutal murder outside a Duluth bar, she stumbles onto a case with roots that go all the way back to the last year of Cindy Stride's life. At the time, Cindy and Stride were on opposite sides of a domestic murder investigation. Gorgeous, brilliant Janine Snow—a surgeon transplanted to Duluth from Texas—was the prime suspect in the shooting death of her husband. Cindy believed her friend Janine was innocent, but Stride thought all the evidence pointed to the surgeon—even though the gun was never found. Despite Cindy's attempts to help Janine, the case led to a high-profile murder trial in which Janine was convicted and sent to prison. During the current investigation, Serena finds a gun used in the murder of a woman connected to an organized crime syndicate—a gun that turns out to be the same weapon used to kill Janine Snow's husband. Two unrelated cases years apart suddenly have a mysterious connection. As Stride investigates the possibility that human traffickers are targeting women in the Duluth port, he begins to question whether he made a terrible mistake eight years ago by putting an innocent woman in prison. And whether he will ever be able to make peace with the memory of his beloved wife and give his heart to Serena.

On a rainy June morning, tens of thousands of people crowd into Duluth for the city’s biggest annual event: the Duluth Marathon. Exhausted runners push to reach the finish line and spectators line the streets to cheer them on. Then, in a terrifying echo of the Boston bombing, there is an explosion along the race course, leaving many people dead and injured. Within minutes, Jonathan Stride, Serena Dial, and Maggie Bei are at work with the FBI to find the terrorists behind the tragedy. As social media feeds a flood of rumors and misinformation, one spectator remembers being jostled by a young man with a backpack not far from the bomb site. He spots a Muslim man in a tourist’s photo of the event and is convinced that this was the man who bumped into him in the crowd–but now the man’s backpack is missing. When he tweets the photo to the public, the young man, Khan Rashid, becomes the most wanted man in the city. And the manhunt is on. But are the answers behind the Duluth bombing more complex than anyone realizes? And can Stride, Serena, and Maggie find the truth before more innocent people are killed?

A GRIPPING AND EXPLOSIVE THRILLER FROM #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR BRIAN FREEMAN Hollywood has a dark side, and it will stop at nothing to hide it... When a freak auto accident kills a driver carrying false identification on the remote roads outside Duluth, Jonathan Stride is disturbed to find a gun in the trunk - and the gun has recently been fired. The next day, a Duluth college student has also vanished, and Stride worries they're connected - but what would have put an ordinary young woman in the crosshairs of a man who has all the hallmarks of an assassin for hire? Stride's investigation leads him to a film crew in Duluth, where a movie is being made based on a case in Stride's own past. The actor playing Stride is Hollywood royalty, an award-winning icon who has charmed his way to the top of the box office. But Stride soon hears whispers that his cinematic alter ego has a dark side...

You re safe, Stride. I found the body at the Deeps. I buried him. Jonathan Stride s best friend, Steve Garske, makes a shocking deathbed confession: he protected Stride by covering up a murder. Hours later, the police dig up Steve s yard and find a body with a bullet hole in its skull. Stride is pretty sure he knows who it is. Seven years ago, an out-of-town reporter disappeared while investigating anonymous allegations of rape against a prominent politician. Back then, the police believed that the reporter drowned at a dangerous swimming hole called the Deeps but the discovery of the body changes everything. Now Stride s partner, Maggie Bei, is forced to ask Stride an uncomfortable question: Did you kill him? Stride is obviously hiding things. He was the last person to see the reporter alive. And he admits lying to Maggie about that meeting, but won t tell her why. With suspicion in the murder pointing at him, Stride finds himself off the case and on leave from the Duluth Police. His only ally in clearing his name is his wife, Serena, who retraces the reporter s investigation into the explosive allegations. The clues all point to a hot Duluth summer years earlier that everyone in town would prefer to forget. Someone was willing to kill rather than let those long-ago secrets come out, and the suspect with the strongest motive is Stride.

A woman has been kidnapped.Now Jonathan Stride must decide if her husband wants her back ... dead or alive. After nearly dying of a gunshot wound, Jonathan Stride has been on leave from the Duluth Police for more than a year. When his partner, Maggie Bei, gets called about a suspicious abduction involving a local lawyer, she tells Stride it's time for him to come back. Attorney Gavin Webster says he paid $100,000 in ransom money to the men who kidnapped his wife. Now they've disappeared with the cash, and she's still missing. Gavin claims to be desperate to find her—but Stride discovers that the lawyer had plenty of motive to be the mastermind behind the crime. Even as Stride digs for the truth about Gavin Webster and his wife, he must also deal with a crisis in his own marriage. His wife, Serena, is struggling after the death of her mother, the abusive woman she hadn't seen in twenty-five years. When she loses control at a crime scene and draws her gun on a fellow cop, Serena finds herself kicked off the Webster case. Alone at her desk, she begins hunting through old police files and starts to ask questions about a mother's death that was written off as suicide. That death haunts Serena like an echo of her own childhood—but her obsession with it takes a terrible toll. As Serena shuts him out of her despair, and his own investigation grows increasingly tangled, Stride wonders whether going back to his detective work was the right decision. But all he can do is keep moving forward. Because Stride fears the Webster kidnapping may be only one part of a horrific murder conspiracy. And it's not over yet.