mystery thrillers. black comedies.

F.O. Fyford, Freddie Omm & Fred De Baer

First met at a convention in honor of a distant ancestor, Frederik III von Bar, also known as Fred de Baer, who lived in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

Over 600 years after his birth, Fred’s name is still being used in various families who descend from him. He had a rich mixture of characteristics:

- Patron of the church who feuded, incessantly, with churchmen.

- Man of peace who frequently went on raiding expeditions against his neighbors.

- Intensely attached to ancestral estates yet travelled far more than most people of his time.

- Rough man of action (a Raubritter) who commissioned some extraordinarily beautiful, sensitive works of art.

Inspired by this man of contradictions, we formed a writing collective. Each of us writes (separately) mystery thrillers and black comedies:

Freddie Omm – Black comedies with exotic themes. Has lived in Indonesia, Germany, Italy, England, Holland and the USA .

Fred De Baer – Upscale comic thrillers with Italian settings. Lived and worked in Milan.

F.O. Fyford – Fast-paced crime thrillers. Uncomplicated.

Among many other models we admire:

- clarity: George Orwell, Muriel Spark

- exuberant hippie gothic dystopias: T.C. Boyle

- poetic fireworks in prose: Jeanette Winterson

- horse and hound: R.S. Surtees

- psychological thrillers: Patricia Highsmith

- black comedy: Evelyn Waugh

- cool atmospheric existentialist plotting: Georges Simenon

- cool concept-plots that stretch at current science: Michael Crichton

- purple prose: Lawrence Durrell, Thomas Carlyle (small doses)

- 20th century take on Augustan periods: Anthony Powell

- horror fiction: Stephen King

- meticulous yet throwaway style: Henry Green

- sceptical classical narrative: Gibbon

- page turners: James Patterson

- polemical narrative: Carlyle (small doses)

- Whig history: Macaulay

- Yankee history in Dutch setting: Motley

- energy in conversation: Samuel Johnson (Doctor)

- straight erotica: Anais Nin