The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Revenge (Jason Bourne) by Brian Freeman

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Revenge (Jason Bourne) by Brian Freeman https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Ludlums-Bourne-Revenge-Jason/dp/B0F5PLFLJ7 The identity of a deadly Chinese spy lies hidden in Jason Bourne’s lost memory in this latest entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series. Shadow – the head of Treadstone – has found evidence of massive Chinese espionage activity in the U.S. The spy running the operations is a shadowy American known only by the codename Bai Ze. No one knows who he is, but when Shadow consults the Files – the hacked AI database she stole from the Chinese – she discovers that Jason Bourne encountered Bai Ze during an operation eight years earlier. The trouble is, Bourne doesn’t remember him. As Bourne hunts for the elusive spy, he meets a reporter named Laney Reese who shares his strange affliction: eight years ago, Laney lost her entire memory, too. For Bourne, that can’t be a coincidence. He’s convinced that whatever happened to both of them is at the heart of the Chinese espionage operation. With Laney at his side, Bourne follows a zigzagging trail of clues to a quirky billionaire and his ex-wife, both of whom may have ties to Bai Ze. As he gets closer to his shadowy adversary, Bourne begins to suspect that he’s walking into a trap. But it’s a trap with an almost irresistible bait – the chance to recover his forgotten memories. Now Bourne must decide how far he’ll go to get his life back. About the author Brian Freeman is a New York Times and Amazon Charts bestselling author of more than two dozen psychological thrillers, including the Jonathan Stride series and multiple popular stand-alone novels. His books have been sold in 46 countries and 23 languages. He is widely acclaimed for his “you are there” settings and his complex, engaging characters and twist-filled plots. Brian was also selected as the official author to continue Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne series. His stand-alone thriller SPILLED BLOOD won the award for Best Hardcover Novel in the annual Thriller Awards given out by the International Thriller Writers organization, and his fifth novel THE BURYING PLACE was a finalist for the same award. His novel THE DEEP, DEEP SNOW was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original in 2021. Kirkus Reviews named his novels THE BOURNE EVOLUTION and INFINITE among its 12 best mysteries and thrillers in back-to-back years.

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We had an amazing young man on the show with us today. We have Brian Freeman. He is here to represent Robert Ludman's series, the Jason Bourne series. And his newest book is coming out, called The Born Revenge. We're going to get into it and all that good stuff. Welcome to the show. Brian, how are you?

I am doing great. It's great to be back with you, Chris. It's great to have you again. Welcome back. And this is, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. I'm just counting this off of the Robert Ludman, Ludlum website. Is there eight books that you? Yeah, that's right. My eight Jason Bourne novel, I can't believe we've already got eight under our belt. It's phone by fast.

If you get a certain number, do you just take over the series and you can kick his name off the title of the boats? How many books did he do? I don't know. Well, you only did three born books, so I got to read. One. You want to renegoti their guy. So give us here.coms. Where do you want people to find you guys on the interwebs and learn more about the book?

Yeah, they can find me on the web at B. Freemanbooks.com. That's all one word B Freemanbooks.com. Has information about all 34 of my novels, including my eight Jathan B. Bourne novels. And then you find me online, Facebook, Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it, Instagram, LinkedIn, just look for B Freeman Books, all one word B Freeman Books, then you'll find me. Now, you're a New York Times bestseller and Amazon charts.

More than two dozen psychological thrillers, including the Jonathan Stride series and popular, multiple popular, standalone novels. Your books have sold in over 46 countries and 23 languages, and he's widely acclaimed for his You Are There, Settings and Complex, engaging in plot twists and all that good stuff. So welcome the show. Do, what, give us a 30,000 overview. What's in this new book?

Well, you know, Born being the man who has lost his memory for its roller writers, That's kind of the suspense gift that keeps them giving all sorts of great dramatic potential. There's always some threat around every corner that Bourne doesn't know about. And I always try to make his memory loss. I kind of like to put that at the center of every book because it's so important who this character is. So this time around, Bourne is on the hunt for someone who's leading a Chinese espionage ring in the U.S. And all the evidence says that, that Bourne met this man

years ago and knows who he is. And yet, Born has no recollection of this. And yet, that was long before he actually lost his memory. So what else going on with Born back then? Uh-huh. Maybe he was taking that peyote or that, uh, smoking that, uh, wacky tobacco. I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah. They do that in movies and TV. They get the, you get the concussion. He has your memory for a while. Wasn't that the plot of Dallas? Yeah, well, right. Well, no, it was all a dream in Dallas. Yeah, it was all a dream.

He already didn't really die or whatever. That's right. Yeah, that's right. So in this latest series, how do you keep it fresh? You've written eight books for this series. You've got, you know, your own series and stuff like that. How do you keep writing and keeping it fresh? Yeah.

Well, you know, part of it is, I mean, when I took over the Bourne franchise, I talked to the folks of Putnam, and I said, born has been around for so long. I mean, at that point, it had been 40 years since the born identity went up. But, you know, and there have been so many iterations to be the Loveland books. You had the Matt Damon movie. Eric Bynne Lippler wrote several Bormn Bauer. I said, I think you can't try to build on all these different pieces that have gone. Or you've got to start fresh.

So my, my born novels are a complete reboot of the series. And the whole goal was to recreate Lleblum's character from the born identity and very authentically. put him down in a modern setting, you know, all new plots and subcharacters around him, basically start the series over. So you don't need to have read anything else or even seen the movies to dive into any of my board. Yeah. It's got a huge meme behind it, too, that whole meme, that whole, what do they call those

things, jiffs or whatever, the, where the guy goes, my God, it's Jason Bourne. That's right. You know, somebody's, you know, showing off on the, internet and you're like yes well and hey if people if people want a picture man damon you know when they're reading the books no problem go for it yeah i think everybody would like that except for who's the one guy where they have that running bit with mad damon and uh whole talk show hosts yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i don't remember which one that that's the longest ongoing bit ever i zing at this point it's well it's been going on for that the whole career of their thing they've been doing that

with this book what are some of the get teases on a little bit more what's the scenario maybe that he's in. Who's the enemies here? Well, you know, the, um, so many of the born books have a big international focus, the on settings all around the world and everything. This time around, I really kind of wanted to bring Bourne home. So the entire action of the books, it takes place in the U.S., and again, they're at treadstone, the organization that Bourne works for this kind of shadowy espionage organization. They've got a lot of evidence of this very coordinated Chinese espionage ring, operating in the U.S., which I think, you know, should feel pretty pretty rich from the headlines.

So, you know, five balloons flying overhead and police stations being found in cities that are operated by the Chinese, so lots of different kinds of things. And was it a wild? There's not a wild, you know, I think, you know, I mean, truth, truth, it's typically stranger than fiction. So, so I've got for and on the hub for the, for the spy who's kind of coordinating the whole effort and he's following clues from what they think happened eight years ago when supposedly he met this Chinese spy and he's trying to recreate what actually happened back then.

That leads him on kind of a hopscotch chase scene around the country as he tries to track down the spy. The Chinese are up to no good something, which is... I've been beaten up on the Russians in the last few books, so I figured time to give them a break and we'll beat up on the Chinese instead. They're having too much fun in real life. It's a tremendous world. Yeah, it's kind of interesting time that we live in.

It seems like really there's three superpowers that are fighting over the globe right now. I guess it's Russia and China and us. Who knew we declare war on our own NATO country, Greenland? It's kind of reminds me that, you know, that movie from the 60 wasn't the mouse that roared where, you know, the little country arranged to be invaded by the U.S. so they could get all of the benefits of, you know, once they were conquered. I never watched that. I think isn't that Puerto Rico in Washington, D.C.?

They're still trying to get stated. You can go to Puerto Rico and save a lot of taxes. We got a lot of people on the show come and talk about that, like how to retire in Puerto Rico. But yeah, it's interesting. The Chinese are up to something and they're up to their things. And yeah, it's probably a good. You know, it's funny, I'll never forget that line from the State Department where I forget who the guy was that said it. But he said, you know, when Russia invaded the Ukraine, we found out that, we found out that, oh, what was the line?

I don't know. I lost it. So we'll just move on from that. I can't remember the exact line. But it was something in effect that we used to think that Russia had the second greatest army in the world. and we found out in your crane that Ukraine has it. You're simple.

Something bit like that. So as you write for the series, anything in the future you want to tease out? Is there any movies or any, you know, I know that you guys work really hard on your own series and this books out pretty quickly? Yeah, I've got, you know, my, I released my book photograph that came out last October and we've been a great run with

photograph. I love the cover of just a fantastic cover. And that that started on as a standalone, no, this might might turn into a series. And then I've got, I've got 11 books in my Jonathan Stride series, kind of gritty Poles procedural set up in Duluth, Minnesota. And it's been a few years since Stride has returned and readers have been a little impatient about being back on stage. So I just turned in the new Stride novel last month. So that's going to be out in October. Well, if it's based in Minnesota, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on there. I will. What did I tell you? Truth, stranger than fiction. Yeah, I'd start to keep up with all the current. We've had some novels on the show that, you know, right in the genre you do, and they'll pick the next war. I think someone picked the Ukraine war that was writing fiction back when they first started.

It was a little creepy. I mean, there have been a lot of things happening in the Born books. The book comes out and two or three months later, all of a sudden, things from the book start actually happening in real life. We thought they're reading these things. them. Now, it looks like with this book, the Born Revenge, you're getting into AI and database. Yeah, a little bit. You know, I mean, I think that what I think what I and other thrill writers try to do is we look at trends in society and we kind of spin those out to their conclusions and see, all right, if you started ramping this up, where does it take you? And so you look, what do you've got in the born revenge of the idea that there's this AI software that is designed to, you know, correlate all these trillions of Bitcoin and look for. information that a human's never going to spot in terms of the trends from all these different points. But when you've got software that can distill, you know, literally billions of things, you start seeing information that you'd otherwise miss. And that's obviously that the Chinese

want their hand. Oh, yeah. AI has got to be, you know, just the greatest thing for authors, maybe. And because it's just like unlimited places you can go and utilize it for, because you can use it in so many places, maybe. Yeah, I don't know. I still, In photograph, my hero talks about AI, and she says currently it's still a little more A than I. And that's, I think that's true, partly because I don't know what it is about authors, but we're, we constantly get all this AI spanned. I mean, I get fake publicists and fake authors. Oh, really? Fake agents and fake book clubs.

I mean, these things start showing up. I mean, I'd probably get a dozen emails a day in my inbox. And they all have the exact same feel to them. You can tell that they're all written by AI, and it's so painfully obvious because they all sound exactly the same. Really? Yeah. Do they have misspellings? Do they have the tells that you?

You know, they're perfectly, they're perfectly spelled. I mean, yeah, but, but they, there's a quality of tone. Yeah, Jeff is so fake that it's clearly not a real human being that created this. Yeah. It like talks like no one talks. Right. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Yeah.

Well, I guess we need to feed it. I don't know. More deliverance-type vocabulary. Deliverance-a-de-le-le-le-le-d. Yeah, the more gets to the actual humans, probably you'll start. Yeah, that's the one thing. I mean, like, some of the videos now that are coming out of that SORA, I have to really kind of look. Is that?

I'm convinced McDonald's really is hiring cats to, you know, to meant off their food. Wait, do not? I thought that was real. But, you know, I remember my mom sent me some videos of Huskies because I have two Huskies. And I was like, yeah, those are really cute. But you know, huskies, that's really not possible for Huskies to do, you know. And watch the movement. And she's like, what?

That is not a real husky. And I explained to her. And she was like, well, what about this one? I'm like, no, that's AI too. You know, you almost have to have like a 4K screen. a huge screen where you can really look at the human. On my phone, I'm like, yeah, I'm hard time because you're like, insane.

But on the screen, big 4K, I can see it all. So is there is, are you just going to pretty much run the series from here on out? What's the future of the Jason Bourne series? You know, well, we'll see what happens next. The Ludlam Estate just did a big movie deal with Universal last summer. They signed up again. So I would expect in the next two or three years, you'll start seeing, you know, born back on big screen. Maybe it'll show up on television.

Big question, does Matt Damon come back and redo the role? Do they kind of start over like James Bond and bring somebody new in for the character? And I think, you know, we're kind of in a holding pattern right now where we're going to go with the books next. You know, the publishers and the agents and the estates kind of want to assess where things are going on the movie side and then be able to kind of make sure that we're dug-filling all. pulling on the same wars. Yeah. Maybe you could mix the Goodwill. I'm sorry.

Maybe you can mix the Bourne. Maybe you could fix. Sometimes they crack myself up. And I'm the only one that thinks it funny. Maybe you could take the Jason Bourne movie, and you can merge it with Goodwill hunting. Right. There we go.

And you could bring Robin Williams back as an AI, or one of those whatever virtual characters there. I didn't left, but you know that time. Yeah, yeah. And then, and then, what's his face? Matt Damon, he takes like, Robin Williams becomes his fighting partner, whatever, you know, partner and they go fight bad guys. It's all, it's all one big chastine anyways. Damn, good-born hunting, you know, so that's pretty much what the books are, too. We're hunting born, so. Yeah, and then, you know, I mean, Robin Williams has got the comedic relief, and then you've got the serious character. and, you know, it sounds like a plot for,

what was that Jackie Chan movie with that one guy? And he just, he was the comedy through a whole thing. I don't remember that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think you know the one I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah. In fact, Jackie Chan's in a lot of those types of movies.

But, so how do you keep fresh in writing? We have a lot of authors on the show, a lot of authors that listen. What sort of writing techniques do you use? Do you try and write every day? Do you, I mean, you're probably got a lot of, books. I think they're right more than our day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, I think this for me, it's really all about the characters. I mean, I always believe that when a series gets stale, it's not because of the plots. It's because the characters start getting stagnant.

And so for me, that's one of the things I really love about Born as a character. I mean, there's such, you know, depth and complexity to Born as a character. And he's got him because he's lost his memory, he's struggling with the issues of really, he is. I, I think that keeps them interesting, but it means every book I want born to grow and change and evolve. They've got what's read to him in the earlier stories. And that's what keeps it fresh, is that, you know, it's not kind of just the same character being dropped down in the middle of a new gun battle. The character is, you know, facing new challenges because of the nature of how he's changed in the books. And that's what keeps it fresh for the reader.

We had the Tom Clancy folks on the week, the other week, I think about a week or two ago. What do you think separates these two? I'm going to create some drama, I guess, here. What do you think is the difference between the Boren, the Jason Boren series and the Tom Panetti series? Which is better? Well, you know, they're both great. And I think they, I think they appeal to different audiences.

I mean, the two big things, I think, are the Clancy books tend to be more, yeah, I don't mean this dismissively. I think Clancy tended to write hardware rollers. It's all about the equipment and the guns and the boats and the tanks and which is fine. But as a result, I mean, they tend to bring in, you know, folks with, you know, military backgrounds to write those books. That's a big part of the storytelling is the kind of the advanced weaponry. And that really drives so much of the background of the storytelling. The other thing is, and those guys, I mean, they have a different philosophy of throws.

And he would be perfectly legit. But their opinion is that the characters should remain the same in every book. They want reuse. Jack Ryan's to be the same in this book than he was in that book. And we're just changing the elements around him. Perfectly legit philosophy. And for readers, a lot of readers like that. They want to know, hey, I'm finding the same character, you know, that I've found in all the other books.

I just have a different philosophy in the Bourne books because of who Born is. I think you want him to grow and change. He's not going to be the same in every book. And Bourne's books are more character-driven than they are, you know, events-driven. I mean, it's more espionage. It's more personal. It's relationships with individuals and not as opposed to big geopolitical things stolen on. Maybe they should make Jason Bourne the next, what's the James Bond?

We need a new James Bond, I guess. We do, yeah. But, you know, a lot of people always talk about that, you know, is Jason Bourne kind of the American James Bond. And right down on the fact, I don't believe it's an accident that Love, Love, Chub, you know, J.B. is the initials for Jason Bourne. I mean, I think that that was kind of idiot's head, too. Does he like martinis?

No, I'm just kidding. Shaken, not sir. And then maybe Borm will think his third, not shaken, you know. Was there, uh, did you, did you tour around and do any, uh, do any traveling? Like some of my novels that come on the show say, we purposely, you know, set things in like Paris so we can travel there and, you know, do research. Yeah, what, what do I do?

I've got, I'm going to Kansas City. I've got, yeah, sure. It could be Paris. It could be Estonia. No, no, I am going to Kansas City. And we're, we're going to do a big event up there next week. Or, yeah, two weeks are not well. Wednesday, the 20A.

It's going to be fun. It's going to be at the J. Rieger Distillery in Kansas City. We're going to do a big, you know, big two-hour-born event because I've got a couple chapters in the Board of Revenge that distillery and Andy Rigger who owns the own business said oh my we got to you know we got to do some fun it so I'm going to be heading Kansas City big event rainy day books in Kansas City is sponsoring it so people can buy tickets and come to the event it's a lot it's going to be a lot of fun swing by Arthur bryan's barbecue are you there it's true I went and gave a speech 10 years ago in Kansas City and uh for some

convention for truckers. And, uh, and so I spent three days just eating nonstop barbecue, breakfast, lunch, and dinner hitting all the barbecue joints in the Kansas City. By the time I got on stage, I pretty much had meat sweats coming out of how forced. I told them that on stage, but what a way to go. I told them on stage. I'm like, if you're in the first five rows, you can probably, you know, I've been eating barbecue for three days straight now. You can probably smell barbecue coming out of my, my pores. It's the one way to gain a report with an audience. So anything else moving forward that people should know about what's upcoming?

Was their favorite part of the book that you enjoyed writing? Maybe you can tease out that won't give away too much. Well, you know, again, it was kind of fun doing a Bourne book set entirely in the U.S. And putting some real places in there. You know, the Calgary in Kansas City, I've got some real places. Up and of all things, Door County, Wisconsin. I mean, beautiful tourist area, nothing but, you know, cherries. and dmbs and things but there's there's born cheating up the countryside in

dark out of was gone so i i think a lot of u.s. readers will have a lot of fun with the settings and if so do you get free drinks and stuff for the distillery because you put in the book i sure as i hope so yeah wait now this sounds like a good idea i need to do a novel and then base it around all my favorite restaurants in town see exactly so i need to get free food you know it doesn't always work though i've been i've been sit but doing scenes set at Samming's Pizza in Duluth for 20 years. And man, I still, I'm still waiting for it. What is going on?

Sammy's pizza. Let's go. You get a hell of a plug here, man. Geez, wow. What are you got to do? Maybe, maybe have Jason go back in and blow up the place. Yeah, that's right. I was in, for my last book, Break Every Rule, and that's how I got to know the

distillery there. The first thing I told Andy Rieger was, yeah, this would be a great place to kill somebody. So, well, you are. I deliver on my promises. Pizza places where he usually where Hillary Clinton hangs out. That's a joke, people. It never happened.

It's not true. Don't do conspiracy. Why am I referencing a conspiracy? It sounded funny in my head. There's always conspiracies when people are. Yeah, maybe George and Bart could run in there, and I don't know. You put on the piece. You must do a thing.

The violation of the international code. Well, admittedly, there should. really be the death penalty for pineapple on people. Well, you know, I think there is an Indolee. It doesn't, does an Italy have a death penalty? First, first they have to de whatever you, like in the end of Braveheart, and then they kill you in Italy. Chris, they have to de-manhood you.

I don't know what the correct term is. Well, it's been fun, Brian, to have you on. Anything more we want to tease out on the thing or a future. I'm scriming up. You know, I just hope everyone goes. out and meets born again into born revenge and looks for my new Jonathan Stride. Now, where the road ends in October and in between, don't forget to pick up your copy of photograph as well. So I'm keeping readers busy.

Well, thank you for coming on, Brian. We really appreciate. Give us your dot coms, too. Once again, it is B. Freemanbooks.com. All one word B. Freemanbooks.com. And you can also find me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, all those things. Be Freeman books. Order at the book, folks, where our fine books are sold. I refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodreads.com, fortunes, Christchrist, Christfuss, LinkedIn.com, Forteouschus, Chrisfoss, Chris Foss, one of the TikTokian-all's crazy place of the internet.

Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. You'll be listening to the most amazing and tell us in bond. To improve your brain and your life. More. I mean too much of the Chris Walsh show podcast. It'll lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger.

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