David Freed (author)
David Freed (born December 4, 1954, in Albany, Georgia) is an American author, journalist, screenwriter, and educator. He grew up in Colorado, where he later studied at Colorado State University, graduating in 1976, and earned a master’s degree from Harvard University. Freed began his career in journalism at the Colorado Springs Sun and the Rocky Mountain News.
As an investigative journalist for the Los Angeles Times in the 1980s and 1990s, he reported on criminal justice issues in Los Angeles County and on other topics, including the Desert Storm era. He shared the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Reporting for his work on the Rodney King riots in 1992.
Freed wrote a humorous book under the pen name Fred Grimes: Dear Ernest and Julio: The Ordinary Guy's Search for the Extraordinary Job (1998). He is also the author of the Cordell Logan mystery-thriller series, including Flat Spin (2012), Fangs Out (2013), Voodoo Ridge (2014), The Three-Nine Line (2015), Hot Start (2016), The Kill Circle (2017), and Deep Fury (2024). Cordell Logan is a retired military assassin and fighter pilot who solves crimes. The first six novels were originally published by The Permanent Press; Blackstone Publishing released Deep Fury.
Freed has written screenplays, including The Devil Came on Horseback and A Glimpse of Hell. He taught journalism at Colorado State University and is in the CSU Media Hall of Fame; in 2018 he was named the college’s Distinguished Alumnus.
In The Atlantic (2010), Freed wrote The Wrong Man about the FBI’s investigation of Steven Hatfill in the 2001 anthrax attacks; Hatfill later received a settlement. Since 2011, Freed has contributed features to the National Air and Space Museum magazine, covering topics from fractional jet ownership to NASA’s Curiosity rover (2012) and a 2014 piece on North Vietnamese soldiers and SA-2 missiles.
A licensed pilot, Freed owns a Cirrus SR20 aircraft.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 06:49 (CET).