The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Fool’s Errand by Jeffrey S. Stephens

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

Fool's Errand by Jeffrey S. Stephens Years after the death of his gangster father, a young man discovers a letter that sends him reluctantly defying the mob as he races to locate a hidden treasure. It’s been six years since the untimely death of Blackie—a charming rogue who endlessly pursued “The Big Deal”—when his son discovers an enigmatic letter telling of a cache of stolen money. Feeling no choice but to pursue his father’s dream, he embarks on a search that leads from New York, to the Strip in Las Vegas, and ultimately to the south of France. Along this life-altering journey, he is confronted by the dangers of his father’s past as he unravels a decades-old mystery, while revealing other long-buried secrets as well.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks chris voss here from thechrisvossshow.com thechrisvossshow.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast oh my god it's like 700 plus podcasts on the chris faust show so if you're sitting around during this holiday season year or after for that matter uh the big old 2021 uh take in go back and

listen to some of those great episodes we're doing kind of a look back on the year we had just the most brilliant authors we only have brilliant offers on the show when we reach out to people we are like are you a brilliant author and they go yes i am and we go okay well When we reach out to people, we are like, are you a brilliant author? And they go, yes, I am. And we go, okay, well, then we're going to put you on the show. So go back and listen to all those wonderful authors, book authors that we have on the show. You go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss to see our books that we're reading reviews and different people we've had on the show as well. You can go to facebook.com forward slash the Chris Voss show and see it over there. Also, you can go to youtube.com, Forchess Chris Voss, and see some of the interviews we've done.

And I think that's about it. You can go to Facebook and LinkedIn. There's giant groups over there for the Chris Voss Show. You can just search and follow them. And this episode is brought to you by IFI Audio and their new NEO IDSD. The NEO is the new wave of digital sound listening for your desktop, music, gaming, and bleeding-edge Bluetooth, even MQA audio file decoding. We're using it in the studio right now.

I've loved my experience with it so far. It just makes everything sound so much more richer and better and takes things to the next level. IFI Audio is an award-winning audio tech company with one aim in mind, to improve your music enjoyment of quality sound, eradicate noise, distortion, and hiss from your listening experience. Check out their new incredible lineup of DACs and audio enhancement devices at ifi-audio.com. Today we have a most brilliant author. He's the author of, I believe, six books, so he's very prolific. I'm still working on my first one, so this guy's got something going on, and we'll find out what it is. His name is Jeffrey S. Stevens, and his latest book that has just come out is called Fool's Errand.

I think it's the story of my life, maybe? I don't know. We'll get into the details of what the book is. So anyway, let's talk more about what Jeffrey is. We'll give you a bio rundown on him. He was born in New York City and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science at the age of 16. He completed a BA in creative writing from Pennsylvania State University at 19. Jeffrey began his first novel in 1970, which would not be completed for several years as he entered the Fordham University School of Law. His private legal practice has included extensive civil and criminal courtroom experience, and he has represented a wide range of celebrity clients. Continuing to practice law while completing several novels, he only recently decided to pursue his career as a novelist in earnest with the encouragement of his wife, Nancy.

Welcome to the show, Jeffrey. How are you? Thank you. I'm good. How are you doing? Good, good, good, good. It's wonderful to have you on. Author of six novels, man. You're pretty prolific at this point, right? Well, at this point I am, as you said, for many years I was not, but I'm working on it. Yeah. There you go. So give us your plugs, Jeffrey, where people can look you up on the interwebs, get to know you better and order up your book. Okay. Thanks. Well, to start with the new book, as you say, is Fool's Errand. This is my personal favorite in terms of being a personal book. It's obviously available on Amazon, Fools Aaron

Jeffrey Stevens, Stevens with a PH. And in your local bookstores, I like to support independent bookstores. They may not have it in, but they can order it for you. And the book that was out just before that, maybe we'll talk about that later, was Crimes and Passion, which was a different story. But as you say, yes, if I could jump ahead, I'll just say, I've got six books that are out there. The first four are spy series about one particular character. And then I want to go in slightly different directions. So I did a murder mystery and that was crimes and passion. And now I've done fool's errand. And as I say, that's more of a personal story, which we could get into. There you go. Well, let's get into it. What motivated you to write fool's errand, this new book? Well, I'll give you, let me start with a serious answer because it's a fun book,

but I'll give you the serious answer. My dad died when he was 50. I was 22. I love my dad. Many of us love our parents, but he was a flawed individual. And the fact that he died so many years ago and so young has not put an end to his influence on my life. And I became fascinated with the concept of how much parents influence us, even when they're gone. And I know that may sound really trite. And your listeners may say, God, who is this guy, an idiot? I mean, of course, your parents are important. But I mean, they really do have impact far beyond their days. And the book at the very beginning, the quote that I use was from the famous editor, Maxwell Perkins.

He was the editor for Hemingway and Fitzgerald and that crew. He said that every good deed a man does is to please his father. So I thought be very interesting. You know, my dad's gone for so long. What if I heard from him again, somehow? And so the plot device I came up with, and I'm not, this is not a spoiler alert necessary because it's right at the beginning of the book, that six years after this character dies, the father, the main character, the narrator of the book finds a box of papers that his father left behind in the attic. And in it is a letter that he wrote to this son

just before he died. And basically, it talks of basically money, a treasure. And this sends the son off on a treasure hunt. So the father was a ne'er-do-well. He was on the fringes of organized crime. He was sort of a New York City mobster type guy, but not a big time mobster, a small time guy. You know, we see the godfather and goodfellas and all these people making a lot of money but the underpinnings of the underworld are a bunch of guys who are out there not making much money and not doing much good you know what i'm saying well a few soldiers yeah yeah there you go so in any in any case so i thought wouldn't it be fun to have this guy find this letter? And he's a straight shooter. He's not at all like his dad. He's, you know, a 30-ish, you know, account executive,

workaday world in New York, kind of even a little bit of a dull guy. And now he gets this letter. And so he has a choice. He could put the letter back in the envelope and said, ah, that dad was always looking for, you know, the brass ring. Or he could say, gee, maybe there's something to this. And we know what he does, which is why the book is called Fool's Errand. And he embarks on what becomes a treasure hunt for this money. And along the way, others, his father's former cohorts, learn that there's been a development with respect to this money that he knew nothing about, the son knew nothing about. And so he gets involved with them, and he gets involved with his father's former friends,

and he winds up going from New York to see his father's best friend in Las Vegas and ultimately winds up of all places in the South of France because the money had something to do with his father's days and when he was in the service and so on. And so it's fun. It's romantic. It's a father-son story. It's about the impact that parents have on us it's about someone reaching out from the great beyond and you don't expect to hear from them and that's basically the story so that's what inspired me to write the book long long-winded answer but that's that's the answer that's awesome i mean i it is interesting the effect that uh our parents have on us i mean even people that don't grow up with their parents maybe their their parents passed away at an early age like yours did or,

or abandoned different things. I've always been kind of fascinated by a lot of CEOs and people that, that became really successful in either their parents, their father left at a young age or passed away at a very young age. But yeah, it is interesting. So what are some of the characters in the book and what are they up to? Yeah. And I'll answer that, but I just want to go on with what you're saying.

Cause it's so true that there's no formula, you know, when I have children and there was no guidebook, there's no instruction manual how to do this, right? So there are people, as you say, whose father died when they were five and they grew up to be these massively successful people. And then there are people who have these very loving, nurturing parents, and they grow up to be complete schmucks. I mean, so you don't know how it's going to impact you. You know, my dad, his sort of his parenting, it was very funny, because I talked to my mother about his years after he was gone. His parenting philosophy was,

I'm going to push him and make him as angry as possible because that's how he's going to be successful because he's going to want to show me. I thought, gee, you know, it would have been nice a little armor, you know, a little armor on the shoulders would have been nice, but that was his view of the world. So anyway, so the characters in the book, getting to your question,

there's obviously Blackie who becomes the centerpiece of this. And you know, from the beginning that he's dead, but there are a lot of flashbacks to what happened during his life and his relationship with his son. And then there's his best friend. And then there's a young woman that our narrator meets along his journey on this treasure hunt. And we don't know, is she good? Is she bad? Does she have evil intent? Is she sincere? We don't know that really until the end. And then there ultimately is this guy in the south of France who solves the mystery for our narrator, who was a very good friend during the war with this narrator's father and the narrator's and the father's best friend so that's where it all kind of ties together so this is i don't want to compare

myself to dickens but it's kind of dickensian in the fact that all these threads kind of come together at the end along with the bad guys chasing him down the answer to what the money was and what happens to it and what happens to our guy so it's's, it's, I hate the expression coming of age novel, cause that's not what it is, but it's really about a young man growing up under the influence of a father who's long gone, which I thought was kind of a fun, a fun way to approach this. So it sounds like he finds a lot about his father as he goes and probably

some of that himself. That's you hit the nail on the head. He finds a lot about his father. He didn't know. And he learns to man up. And And and so that's what it is. And it's really, you know, I hope that when people read it, that they'll laugh and they'll cry and they'll be entertained because that's that's that's the point. And I was talking to a gentleman in a radio interview and we're talking about this. And he said, you know, it's funny you say this because it really touches me because my dad died when I was 20. That's what

he said. And he said, and yet to this day, all these years later, when I do something, I think, God, my father would have liked that or, you know, or my father wouldn't have been too proud of me if I did this. So, you know, and mothers and daughters and mothers and sons and fathers and daughters, it's, it's really really complicated and it's what makes the fabric of life so fascinating i think my dad was a tough dad you know it's really interesting that i remember the exact moment in time like it's the most clear thing that i have in my relationship with my father and when he told me he was proud of me it was the you know first and and it might have been the last i don't know i was that good of a kid but i think i was 35 but

but yeah it was uh he was a tough guy and and i and i realize now looking back he was trying to i think a lot of fathers do this they're trying to toughen you up for the world because they know the world is tough and you know mom will coddle you and you know you fall on skin your knee and you know she's like hey you know um so you um so does is there some mafia in this story where some of the guys that come into it or maybe his old compadres or oh yes yes his old friends his old friends show up and you know they're trying to chase down the sun because they know that the sun is going after this money that that that the sun is chasing that blackie was behind but But yeah, it's interesting.

What you said, by the way, my dad was the same deal. I mean, for him to say he was proud of me, forget it. And I'll tell you, I got to tell you one, if you don't mind, I think of this as a funny story. I'm sort of making fun of myself. But my father was the kind of guy, like, he never came and watched me play ball. I mean, when I grew up, I was in the Bronx. And, you know, we did Sandlot kind of stuff, you know.

This was not like these fancy fields and the kids play on and they get uniforms and everything. We had nothing. We were lucky. We had a baseball. So this one day he came to see me play ball and I was a scrawny little kid. I was all field, no hit, you know, when I was a kid, I was a kid that always played second base, you know, you get the picture. So anyway, so I'm up at bat and I see him there and he's in these like makeshift kind of stands, you know you get the picture so anyway so i'm up at bat and i see him there and he's in these like makeshift kind of stands you know these bleacher type stands off to the side

and i get up i'm so excited he's here and i line this shot to right field and i'm so excited that as i'm running down first base i keep looking to see you know did he see this was he watching when this happened and the right fielder threw me out at first it was a great line drive one hopper and he just saw me like you know dragging down dragging down the first baseline looking for my father i got thrown out so of course did my father say oh that's too bad so no he told me i was a jerk and you know and made fun of me for it so uh these are the things that toughen us up in life, Chris. That's how it goes. The lessons we learn sometimes. Yeah.

But, yes, there are mobsters getting back to this. And so, I think part of the fun of the book, because it's a fast read, is that there's fun stuff in there. There's the guy and Blackie and his son in those flashbacks. There's the son and his friends. There's Blackie's friends, but they're also these bad guys. So there's danger involved. And we get to see some interesting different settings, as I say, in New York City, in Las Vegas, and then in the south of France, in, you know, in Monaco and in Saint-Paul-de-Vence and places like that. So I was like that.

I'm a guy, by the way, in my writing in general, I like to go to different places. I think that's fun for readers. I mean, once in a while, like my murder mystery, Crimes and Passion, that all takes place in one town. It's very, very, I don't want to say claustrophobic, but it's intended to be tight. You know, it's all about a murder mystery

that happens in a suburban town. But generally, like my spy novels, they're all globetrotters. I like when the guy's going all over the place. I think it's all about a murder mystery that happens in a suburban town but generally like my spy novels they're all globetrotters i like when the guy's going all over the place i think it's fun people get to see things that they may be having gotten to and hear about them and like that and they give the description of different uh you know it paints different pictures and you get to go to different places uh so you grew up in the bronx was there uh some influence that came to the mafia figures in your book and the experience there from real life? Oh, yeah. You might have met a few people in the Bronx.

Yes, I met a few guys along the way. You know, I'm a real believer that, first of all, that readers today are so sophisticated and so intelligent that you can't fool them. So if you write about things you don't know about or places you haven't been, forget it. You're not going to fool anybody. So I always write about what I know. And the Bronx was, it was an interesting place in those days. It wasn't, it's strange to say, it wasn't as dangerous as it is now, I don't think. You know, you didn't get shot in the street. You got beat up pretty good. I mean, you know, that would happen. And you learned, you know, as Billy Joel said, I lost a lot of fights, but it taught me how to lose.

OK, you know, so I got kicked around. OK, but nobody was shooting anybody. You know, it was just a different time, Chris. And, you know, we played ball in the streets until it was dark. And then, you know, we went into our apartment buildings and we came out the next day and did the same thing again. And that was just life and everybody was equally poor. And so you didn't feel poor because nobody had a whole lot more than you did. And there were these characters who drove the fancy cars and wore, you know, the flashy suits and the ugly ties.

And you knew who they were, you know, when they came to, you know, collect protection money from the local bars and stuff. And so that was that was just life. And it just hummed along. Blacks and whites got together. I mean, I lived right next to a development that we used to call in the Bronx. I don't know what they call it nowadays, but they call them projects. And the projects were, they were these government created housing. You know, it was quote, low income housing with, you know, it was, quote, low income housing, with, you know, built by architects who had the imagination of a gnat, because they looked like, you know, they look really like prisons more than anything. But, you know, we went to school with those black kids, we played ball with them, there was no big, you know, there was no big racial divide like there

is today, you know, that just wasn't it. You know, I mean, it was just a different time. And so it wasn't as scary. And I've gone back to visit my old neighborhood. I live up in Connecticut now, but I go back to visit my own neighborhood. And it's really, it's, it's, it's pretty grim at times. And it's a shame because it's a different world. Yeah. Some of those areas just have gotten worse and the redlining of mortgages and everything else. So you, you left your law practice to, to write books. So this has been pretty good for you then. Yeah, I've been very fortunate. I represented a lot of great people in my career. Some not so great, but I didn't do much criminal work. I started off

thinking I might be a criminal defense attorney, because obviously the influence of my dad, you know, is evident there again. But what I found, what I found early on, and I know this is going to be another one of these brilliant observations, is that if you have a criminal defense practice, you have to generally represent criminals, because otherwise you're not going to be busy. And most of them, and this is going to come as a terrible flash to the bar. I mean, the American Bar Association will hate this, but you know, most of them turn out to be guilty. And so your job is to keep them out of jail,

but they didn't get arrested for nothing. I mean, police are not crazy, right? You arrest a guy in a shooting or for bookmaking or for, you know, for dealing drugs. So these were not great people. So very early in my practice, I made, cause I was a sole practitioner. I worked my way through law school. And then I opened up an office and early on, I made the decision that you have to conclude who you want to spend your life with. And your clients tend to become

friends. And I said, do I really want to be hanging out with these people? No. So I left New York, I went up to Connecticut, and I built a business practice that was more geared towards, you know, civil litigation and real estate and different things. And along the way, one story that people like to hear is I met a woman at a party. and we became friendly through another friend of mine. My wife and I became friendly with her and her husband, and she was a caterer. And she had this idea about publishing a magazine and her husband and she came to me and said, we'd be interested if you'd like to represent her. And so I said, sure, that sounds like fun. And so Martha and I did a lot of work together and ultimately created

martha stewart living the magazine and the tv show and i did all of that for her i did the deal at when she went with time warner we got her on the today show we got her television program going and that was a big part of my life for a lot of years and she was a fascinating fascinating person she always seems really nice i always i always i see the uh relationship she has with uh who's that rapper i'm on snoop dogg yeah i'm not a big rapper fan i'm a metallic old rock dude you know it's it's good music but i'm just not it's not my thing i'm just old yeah i like the beetle beetles and billy joel yeah you and me. We're big Billy Joel fans. Yeah, the Beatles. But yeah, I mean, she always seems really nice, but I think it's fun.

I always see videos of the two of them doing stuff, and I think she's just a hoot. Yeah, that's kind of corny. I will say this, and just for the men and women in your audience, there was a long time that I was representing her, that people had a lot of negative things to say about her. And my response is always the same. If Martha had been a man and doing all this, everyone would have said, what a tough guy. Isn't he terrific. Isn't he a go getter. And you know what they called her as a woman. And so, you know,

you talk about sexism, that's real sexism. And she really is a driven person she's incredibly smart she's incredibly talented and is she tough tough as nails chris tough as nails and you know what good for her good for her i mean i i i see her cooking and stuff in fact i saw a lot of you know we had a lot of off time with the quarantine so i would see her instagram posts of what she was cooking and doing different things and she just she just always seemed nice i'll i'll eat whatever she makes oh i should listen i follow her on instagram and if i ate everything she makes i'd weigh 400 pounds she has no mercy she has no mercy pies and cakes and cookies oh my god yeah there's one other there's one other

chef and we're kind of off topic but i'll just throw it in in here real quick. I think it's the barefoot Contessa. I think it is or something. And she makes like everything with butter. Like, it's like, okay, if starting out throwing five pounds of butter and that's just awful. So, um, back up for a second, because that's what, what Julia child who I met through Martha, by the way, now I'm not trying to throw names around, but Julia was on Martha show. And you know, the famous line is what's the secret to french cooking butter butter and more butter that's not aina garner is it that's the i'm not sure i don't know her name i always see her show

and i start watching it and my cholesterol goes up just watching the show and i have to turn it off because it's true my heart starts palpitating a little bit like the food looks great but i'm just like watching her throwing the ingredients and she's like yeah pound butter there and just throw out some butter and i'm sure that tastes great but it'll be my last meal yeah exactly uh anything more you want to plug about the book if you want to talk about the other little books let's talk about those two well i you want to plug about the book? If you want to talk about the other little books, let's talk about those too. Well, I just want to say that, you know, God, I wish everyone would buy Full Zurn because I think it's a fun, touching and entertaining book. And before that, they kind of came out one after the other this time, which, you know, isn't always the best thing. But the other book is Crimes and Passion, which is completely different.

It's a murder mystery. And again, available on Amazon and your local bookstores and all that stuff. And, uh, crimes and passion is, is a totally different thing. You mind if I talk about that for a minute? Okay. So, so the reason for crimes and passion was, it was a time in my life when it seemed that everybody we knew, my wife and I knew were getting divorced. Everyone was getting divorced. And I really wanted to write something about that. And I thought, God, would that be depressing? I mean, who the heck wants to read that? It's bad enough they're all getting divorced. Who the hell wants to read about it? So I decided, what do people like to

read? They like to read murder mysteries. So I felt that if I could wrap the divorces around a murder mystery, that would work. So this is another book where the inciting incident happens right at the beginning, which is a woman is murdered right at the beginning of the book. And we learn that she was married, she was a sexual predator, and she was keeping a journal of her various exploits of all the men in town that she was sleeping with. And so now as the police detective who's involved in this has to sort this out, he realizes that any one of those men

is a likely candidate for having committed the murder. And the person most likely to help him solve it is the therapist who was seeing this woman because this woman was in a group therapy thing

where she was getting information from the other women and seducing their husbands. Nice girl anyway wow that's brilliant yeah so thank you she finds out i was having bad marriages and then so she doesn't exactly right so we get to look at what makes marriages work and fail and at the same, there's a murder mystery with mounting tension because whoever committed this murder might be likely to kill this woman therapist. And of course, then we've got the detective wanting to protect her and like that. So that's crimes and passion. And that's an entertaining murder mystery. And that's intended, I'm going to bring that detective

back in another book that I finished that we're going to get published hopefully next year. And so that's that Robbie White is his name. And he's really, you know, he's a hard edged former New York City police detective who then moved into the suburbs. And so that's enough about that. But so that's crimes and passion. And so that was a fun book to write. And it helped me look at some of those issues along the way. So I don't want to make it sound like it's a big, serious tome. To the contrary, it's a murder mystery. of those issues along the way. So I don't want to make it sound like it's a big serious tome. To the contrary, it's a murder mystery. Yeah, that sounds like fun. In fact, note to self, go to men's divorce help groups to pick up chicks.

You know something? Not a bad thought. Not a bad thought. I love the idea. I'm a single guy and I ain't getting married, but I've always wanted, if i ever went to law school because i i love law and the whole complexity of it if i ever went to law school and i kicked myself uh for not going but uh i would be a divorce attorney because that just seems like so much fun to me like you know

yeah i've done enough divorces to say it can be, it can be a little stressful. People are not at their best, you know? Yeah. I probably would take some payment in kind, even though it's illegal from what I understand, but you know what I mean? They have to be a little careful about fiddling around with clients. Divorces and funerals, people are not necessarily at their best. And so I don't know that it's all that much fun anyway.

That's what the judge told me anyway yeah exactly let's plug those other books oh my other books that's that's a series of spy thrillers and it started with targets of deception and the last one is rogue mission and that's kind of that's kind of an interesting background because I wrote the first one, never expecting to write more than one, because I had a friend who was with the CIA. And I thought it would be fun to write a book about that. So it was kind of like an unconventional spy book. It wasn't your normal thing in the beginning. Because in the beginning, the character's pretending not to be a, not to be a, sorry. He's calling you right now. He knows you're talking about him. Not to be a, not to be a, he's calling you right now, not to be a spy. He's, you know, so in any event, so they liked it so much that they published it.

And then Simon and Schuster said, you know, give us some more of these. And so that's how I wound up writing four, but four was enough. And then I moved on to other things, but they're exciting. They're, uh, you know, we've got a potential film deal on those, uh, with this character, Jordan Sandor, and, um, you know, hopefully something comes to that because the movie would be great. And then, then I would write more of them, but for now I'm just going in different directions. There you go. So as the, the four, is it the same sort of theme and character through those four same character all different stories it's targets of deception targets of revenge targets of

opportunity and and rogue mission is the last one but the reason by the way the reason for the last name is readers were writing in and saying i read these but they're all called targets i can't remember which one i read so the publisher said you know maybe we should give up on this target stuff and just give me another title so we went went with Road Mission. So that was the outlier. Well, there you go. Let me pull those up. Do we have all the titles on them? Do did targets of opportunity that was the second then targets of revenge which picked up on some things that happened in targets of opportunity and then rogue mission was the most recent there you go we've got another one in the can but we are not publishing it yet we're going to see what's going to happen with with you know movies and all that stuff so we shall see you guys got to buy this book before you get the next one that's

how it works so go on buy you gotta buy you get the next one. That's how it works. So go out and buy it. You got to buy Fool's Earring. The world's got to buy Fool's Earring and help me out here because, you know, it's tough. This is a tough racket selling books, as you know. Our podcast works the same way. We can't do too many podcasts. You have to wait for the downloads to all happen. If you overfill the downloader, it doesn't distribute them overall.

So you got to feed them. So everyone should go check out Jeffrey jeffrey's books fools aaron anything more uh we should know about any of your stuff jeffrey or what you're doing uh only that fool's yarn will be one of the great reads that you'll have this year but i really encourage people if they're kind enough to want to buy it you know going to an independent bookstore is great. Even Barnes & Noble. But independent bookstores particularly need the business. And so give them the chance to order the book for you if they can.

And if not, you could just get it overnight from Amazon. It's there. And we're three days away from the end of the year. So it might be the greatest first read that you'll do in 2021. That's what I'm saying. There you go. In the new year. This is going to be the good one. All right'll do in 2021. That's what I'm saying. There you go. In the new year, this is going to be the good one. All right.

Do we get the plugs in for your website? Do you want to plug that? Yeah, it's www.jeffreystevens.com. Stevens with a PH. That's the one thing where people get a little ginchy looking for it. But it's jeffreystevens.com. If you go to Amazon and look me up, all the books will come up. And you can see my bio and

all that and see all the good reviews that we've gotten for it. And one thing that's really nice, I must say, is because the book's only out a couple of weeks now, this is kind of a brand new release. And a lot of reviews are coming out now. And they're very, very favorable. And I must say, I'm very gratified that there's been a string of them from female reviewers. And again, I shouldn't make the distinction, but sometimes, you know, people say, well, this is a book about a father and a son, but it's also a fun mystery. It's got a great romance to it. And women are really reacting positively to the book. So that's been nice. Women are great book readers.

There's much more so than that. They're more cerebral than we are as men. We just like clubbing stuff and things yeah guys want to know what the body count is and how much sex you can have in the book i mean cars in the book i've had people i've had people write to me and say about about the jordan sanders series but i can't believe i had a i had a read to 100 page 120 for the first sex you know you know it is a spy thriller it's not a romance novel that's why we don't have a lot of romance novelists on the show i mean i love them

they're wonderful people they write great books but i just can't i just can't do an interview where every other question is like so they had sex on the beach again and again wait how many times they have sex you know yeah didn't that sand get kind of like never mind i just i don't know you know that image i'm just a bad romantic anyway so i i don't know that i'm the professional interview romance authors so uh it's been wonderful you have on the show jeffrey thank you for coming with us and spending some time with us uh thank you thank you and uh happy new year to everybody i hope 2021 is a lot better than 2020 uh you know we're kind of in the bottom so it's it's hopefully it's all up from here

that or we're going to be just uh traveling the wasteland finding upright thank you chris this is fun thank you very much it's been wonderful to have you jeffrey and my audience thank you for tuning in be sure to check out je's book, Fool's Errand. You can find it at your local booksellers. Order it up. Support those local booksellers. Everyone's struggling right now with COVID, and we know Jeff Bezos has got enough money, but if you need to order it from Amazon, you can there as well.

Go see all of the links that we have for me at Facebook.com, The Chris Voss Show. You can go to Goodreads.com, forward slash Chris Voss, YouTube.com, or YouTube.com, forward slash Chris Voss. One of these days I'll get it. There's over 700 episodes, and we don't have a lot of interviews that have been going on over Christmas. I guess a lot of authors didn't want to take the two weeks off. So go back and listen to all the great interviews we've had. We've had so many great

interviews so many life-changing things we had happen uh on all the interviews we did so go back and listen to those uh there's just some wonderful things you can go back and search them on the chris faust show and all that good stuff thanks for tuning in thanks for everyone for being here we'll see you guys next time