George Freedman

By Susan L. Sherwood, Staff Writer, Wayland Town Crier, Wayland, MA, October 27, 2004.

Wayland's George Freedman, 82, has pursued a professional career as an inventor. As such, he has an active mind--one that rarely, if ever, shuts down.

Thus, it's not particularly surprising to learn that since he "retired," he has invented yet another career for himself: mystery novelist.

And he has just published the second book in his ongoing "Harry & Naomi Levine Mystery" series, called "Striking Terror."

The first, "Eldernapped," came out in 2001, and Freedman is currently at work on the third, with a tentative title of "Ashes to Ashes."

Harry and Naomi are an elderly couple, "full of pep," as Freedman says. In their first adventure, they're on a tour of Italy--loosely modeled on an Elderhostel trip that Freedman and his wife Ruth took several years ago.

During their journey, an old lady is kidnapped, and the Levines undertake to solve the crime and free the victim.

In "Striking Terror," Harry and Naomi travel to a reunion of a World War II Navy crew, loosely modeled on a reunion that Freedman and his wife attended three years ago here in the U.S. In the book, the ship, an LST (Landing Ship Tank), a veteran of the Normandy invasion of 1944, is one of the last two or three of its kind still afloat in the world, the only survivors from more than 1,000 LSTs. After completing an extraordinary voyage from Crete to America, it is greeted with wild enthusiasm by the reunion attendees, men in their 70s and 80s.

At the event, Harry and Naomi uncover an Al Queda plot, using weapons they had secreted on board the LST 325, to destroy the city of Mobile where the historic vessel is docked.

In writing the book, Freedman drew upon the personalities of his former shipmates and their reminiscences of what it was like to serve aboard an LST.

In "Ashes to Ashes," which Freedman hopes to complete early next year, the Levines are at home in a Boston suburb, where they find themselves accidentally up against a fugitive criminal based on FBI Public Enemy #1, Whitey Bulger.

Freedman's mysteries contain considerable historical detail.

In "Striking Terror," for instance, Freedman did a great deal of research on the Navy and on LSTs. For his upcoming book, he has read a decade’s worth of newspaper articles as well as a George Higgins mystery, also based on Whitey Bulger.

"Higgins was a Boston cop, and he knew his subject," Freedman says. "So I can trust him."

Freedman recalls that he's always wanted to be a writer. Nevertheless, upon graduating from MIT with a degree in metallurgy, he joined the Raytheon Company , where he directed the company’s New Products Center.

Freedman had a team of inventors working for him who produced three to four inventions that actually went into production, "which is quite a record," Freedman says. He himself has some 30 patents to his name.

All along, though, he wrote and wrote. Mainly technical manuals, guides to technical and scientific editing, and children's stories. A major writing accomplishment was the publication in 1988 of "The Pursuit of Innovation," in which Freedman tackled strategies to manage innovation for business growth.

"When I had free time, I was always writing stuff," he says.

And then he retired.

"Well, I didn't really retire. I have three partners who are inventors," he says. "It doesn't really matter what the field is. It can be medical products, home appliances, toys. Our company is called Invent Resources Inc. [see www.weinvent.com]. We do inventions on demand."

Now that he no longer has to report to Raytheon every day, however, his writing urges are bursting out.

"I'm always up at 5:30 and I hit the computer. I write reports, proposals and product descriptions for the company," he says. "But when the technical pile gets lean, I start working on my fiction. I don't really care what I work on so long as it's creative. In that sense, writing is the same as inventing."

His publisher was enthusiastic about the first novel and suggested a series--something like Nancy Drew seven decades earlier.

A member of the New England Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America as well as of the Authors Guild, Freedman says he's still a neophyte at writing.

"But I'm improving. I used to be rather verbose. Now my writing is more lean," he says.