The son of a street cop, David was born in Georgia, grew up in Denver, and spent nearly two decades as an investigative journalist, mostly with The Los Angeles Times. He served as The Times’ lead police reporter, reported from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, was named as an individual finalist for the Pulitzer Prize’s Gold Medal for Public Service, the highest award in American journalism, and shared in a Pulitzer for team coverage of the 1992 Rodney King riots.
David later worked as an investigator and associate field producer for CBS News before selling a screenplay to 20th Century Fox. He subsequently spent more than 10 years writing movies in Hollywood while also moonlighting within the federal intelligence community as an independent contractor, principally with the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency.
Since then, David has written extensively for national magazines, including Air & Space Smithsonian, where was a contributing editor, and the Atlantic, where his expose, “The Wrong Man,” was honored by the American Society of Magazine Editors as one of the year’s best feature stories. You can find links to some examples of his journalistic work below.
David holds a Master of Liberal Arts degree from Harvard University and currently serves as a creative writing instructor at Harvard’s Extension School. He has also served as a special assistant professor of journalism at Colorado State University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree and is a member of CSU’s Media Hall of Fame. In 2018, he was honored as the university’s College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Alumnus.
When not teaching, writing, or flying his airplane, you can find him at home in the hills above Santa Barbara, California, playing catch and tug-of-war with his Australian shepherd, Oz, and working on the next Cordell Logan mystery.
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