Jonathan Stride

Detective Jonathan Stride is back. 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? This gripping thriller from the acclaimed author of Spilled Blood will keep you riveted.

Turn to Stone takes place in the days immediately preceding the events of The Cold Nowhere, the sixth book in Freeman's thrilling Jonathan Stride series. On his way back to Duluth, Stride stops to visit the grave of his mother in a small Wisconsin town. After a shocking occurrence in the cemetery, Stride becomes enmeshed in a gruesome and suspenseful search for a killer who knows things no one else alive should know.This novella from master of suspense Brian Freeman, winner of the International Thriller Writers Award, is not to be missed.

Ten years ago, six-year-old Catalina Mateo hid under the porch of her family home while a knife butchered her mother and a bullet killed her father. Now a rough-sleeping orphan, Cat arrives at the house of Detective Jonathan Stride, pleading for protection. Drenched in the icy waters of Lake Superior, she claims to have narrowly escaped a cold-blooded killer.Stride's raw instinct is to protect Cat, whose late parents' case-and his personal guilt associated with it-still sends a shiver down his spine. As a result, he takes the troubled teenager under his wing.But Stride's partner, Maggie Bei, is not convinced. She doubts the sincerity of this beautiful young streetwalker who has so easily won Stride's trust, and now sleeps in his house with a butcher's knife under her pillow.As Stride continues to care for Cat, Maggie's suspicions solidify, and a single question occupies 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 his 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.

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 25 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.