A.C. Frieden, born André Frieden (1966, Dakar, Senegal) is a Swiss-Brazilian-American fiction author and attorney living in Chicago, Illinois.
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Frieden, the son of a Swissair executive, spent most of his youth abroad. After leaving his birthplace in West Africa, he spent several years in Calcutta, India, then moved to Zurich and Geneva, Switzerland, and then to London, England, before emigrating with his parents to the southern United States in the early 1980s. In 1984, he returned to his native Switzerland to serve in the Swiss Army, where he trained as a marksman. He later came back to the U.S. to complete undergraduate and graduate studies in molecular biology in Texas, followed by his Juris Doctor in New Orleans, Louisiana. During that period he began his fiction writing, while continuing his legal education, including studies at Moscow State University law school in Russia and at the University of Vienna Juridicum in Austria. During law school he also worked as a legal analyst at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and as a law clerk at Louisiana State University Medical Center. In 1997, Frieden moved to Chicago for an LL.M. in intellectual property law and to start his career as an associate attorney in a prominent law firm.
Since the mid-1980s, Frieden had visited dozens of countries, and what began as short stories, diaries and poems, many written during his travels, soon emerged as ingredients for future novels. Mysteries and thrillers soon became his passion. His first manuscript, Canvas Sunsets Never Fade, a mystery based on nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, was written in 2000 and published in 2004. His second novel Tranquility Denied is set in post-Cold War Moscow, Stockholm and New Orleans, and is the first in a series featuring hotshot maritime lawyer Jonathan Brooks. The book was launched in Russia and in the U.S. in late 2006. His publisher recently announced the release of two more Jonathan Brooks thrillers by 2013.
Today, Frieden continues his fiction writing with several novels and short stories in the pipeline, while also serving as Assistant General Counsel for a global publishing and information services company. For his novels, Frieden has spent much of the last ten years researching the most challenging conflicts of the Cold War, including the Tito–Stalin split, the French Indochina War, the Korean War, the Fall of Saigon, the United States intervention in Chile, the Invasion of Panama, CIA activities in Bolivia, and the August Coup in the former Soviet Union. He’s also extensively researched key events in the changing post-Cold War era, such as the sinking of the K-141 Kursk, the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, and the 2011 Libyan civil war. He has conducted extensive on-site research, including interviewing key political figures, in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Bulgaria, Poland, Serbia, Turkey, Uruguay, and Venezuela for background information for his upcoming political/espionage thrillers set in Latin America and Central Europe. His research also led him to witness the 2009 Honduran coup d'état firsthand and to interview former combatants in Nicaragua. Frieden also visited China and Vietnam for research on another political thriller and recently published a photography book capturing his journey through North Korea, including Pyongyang, Kaesong and the Korean Demilitarized Zone. In addition, his non-fiction works have appeared in numerous legal, technology and international business publications, including the National Law Journal, BNA International books and journals, and various CLE law books, though his literary passion continues to be mysteries and thrillers.