The Color of Death: A Novel by Trey Gowdy

 

Issue No. 656 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Sept. 8, 2025) follows the setbacks and successes of an Assistant DA sleuthing for motive, means, and opportunity—in a small town in South Carolina. It’s a page-turner! Plus, click here for recent issues posted at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog, including There's Got to Be a Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of the Stuff That Gets in the Way of Real Work. Also, check out the 20 management buckets (core competencies). In Trey Gowdy’s new novel, The Color of Death, you’ll find at least 10 leadership and management lessons to share around the water cooler or at staff meetings.   Learner or Excuse-Maker? If you still need to squeeze in one more “summer read” before bravely facing the fall avalanche of what-didn’t-get-done-this-summer, I’d recommend this page-turner:    The Color of Death: A Novel by Trey Gowdy and Christopher Greyson (Aug. 26, 2025) No Spoiler Alert! I won’t reveal the story, the plot, or the twists and turns—but suffice it to say, I dropped everything on my sacred To-Do list and read the final 100 pages of this fast-moving story in one sitting. Here’s what I loved about Trey Gowdy’s first novel:    • Poignant scenes    • Memorable characters and descriptions    • Pathos, yet hope amidst heartbreak    • Short chapters I appreciate Trey Gowdy’s balanced opinion show on Sunday night TV, so it was fascinating to read his take on a murder investigation in a small town in South Carolina. Gowdy’s bio is stunning: former state and federal prosecutor, eight years in Congress (2011-2019), and chair of two committees. In The Color of Death, the first-person voice of the Assistant DA, Colm Truesdale, provides the color commentary—and what he says (versus what he would like to say) is both vivid and entertaining.     • He tells his colleague, “Bones,” who drinks only skim milk, “You should order the fat bomb special. You’re so skinny I could save you from drowning by tossing you a fruit loop.”    • Noticing the kindness of a waitress helping another customer, Colm leaves her a hundred dollar tip.    • Describing the town’s budget meetings: “They are, after all, the opposite of Christmas—people meet and take your presents. They don’t exchange them.” The Color of Death delivers page after page:    • On mentoring a rookie detective: “We have reached a critical juncture in this nascent relationship. He’s either going to see his mistake or justify it. He’s either a learner or an excuse maker.”    • “Robitis” is defined. “It’s what happens when some lawyers get promoted to judge and put on a robe. A few become humbler and more introspective with the gravity of their ascension to the bench. Others, however, confuse themselves with God.”    • The judge’s “not-so-subtle power play.” The guest chairs in the judge’s chambers are intentionally lower than the judge’s chair! (Note: I know of a pastor who went a step lower. His guest chairs were from the children’s department. Honest!)    • “He stayed up too late again last night thinking about this case. The line between thinking and obsessing was getting blurry.” SADNESS, BUT HOPE. Oh, my. Murders or suicides? You be the judge. While fiction, it feels like real life. Like local news in L.A. or even your city or town. Crummy characters battling broken people—some competent, but all broken. After I read the last page, the sad story hung with me. The next day, I found solace listening to Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway sign this hymn, “Come Ye Disconsolate.”   Listen, especially, to the lyrics of “Come Yet Disconsolate,” sung by Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway. “Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.” (Listen here.)   MEMORABLE ONE-LINERS:    • “The currency of government work is office space, and right now I am broke, having been kicked out of my old office and banished to the basement.”    • The defense attorney: “The guy in the suit slings out business cards like a dealer in Vegas.”    • The Assistant DA’s boss needs assurances: “Please tell me the case is a slam dunk. Video. Confession. Nuns as eyewitnesses. Please?”    • At the small town diner where people claimed “their booth”—like they claimed a pew at church as “their pew”—Colm philosophizes, “Nothing like a diner menu to recalibrate life.” QUESTIONS I’D LIKE TO ASK THE AUTHOR:    • You mention multiple times that when interviewing suspects, you’re sitting at a steel table (or metal table) “bolted to the wall.” (I have a hunch, but why mention that so many times?)    • The Assistant DA says to himself, “I’m careful not to cross my arms and instead lean in. It’s a technique to make people more at ease.” (So how much of being an effective prosecutor is technique versus the “10,000 hours” principle?)    • You write in your bestselling book on persuasion, Doesn’t Hurt to Ask  (my 2020 book-of-the-year), that young litigators “needed two things: confidence and practice.” Now, after writing your first novel, do you still stand by this view? Or, are there now three or four things that rookie prosecutors must master? OK. That’s my review. No spoiler alert—just my recommendation to read this page-turner. (And yes, along the way, if you look for it—you’ll find at least 10 leadership and management lessons to share around the water cooler or at staff meetings.) TO ORDER FROM AMAZON, click on the title for The Color of Death: A Novel, by Trey Gowdy and Christopher Greyson. Listen on Libro (8 hours, 37 minutes). And thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy.   YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) You’re the District Attorney—and the Assistant DA and lead detective want you to request a search warrant for a very, very explosive situation. (If it goes bad, you could lose your job.) You wanted to be the DA, but now you’re thinking there’s any easier way to make a living. QUESTION: Do leaders develop courage on-the-job, or do they bring courage to the job?  2) List 10 leadership and management lessons you learned from reading a novel. What’s your No. 1 Leadership Lesson?        SECOND READS: Fresh Solutions From Classic Books You have changed—and your problems have changed—since you read this the first time! Book #26 of 99: Little Bets For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by featuring Book #26 of 99 in our series, “Second Reads.” The big idea: REREAD TO LEAD! Discover how your favorite books still have more to teach you and the people you’re coaching and mentoring.   Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge  From Small Discoveries by Peter Sims    Little Bets surprised me. I expected cute little success stories like, “Well…I just flipped the spaghetti onto the wall—and it stuck!” Instead, the innovators of little experiments were actually productive, creative teams of “rigorous, highly analytical, strategic and pragmatic” people. There are no step-by-step formulas.    • Read my review (Issue No. 217, May 15, 2011).    • Order from Amazon.    • Listen on Libro (5 hours, 3 min.).    • Management Bucket #6 of 20: The Program Bucket Caution! The book’s approach is a 180-degree plunge from what the profs taught us. The author quotes Sir Ken Robinson, “We are educating people out of their creativity.” Plus, most management approaches are all about reducing errors and risk—not giving license to having a good whack at a half-baked idea. (Goodness, this is God’s money we’re wasting!)    CLICK HERE FOR BOOKS BY JOHN      In Mastering 100 Must-Read Books, by John Pearson with Jason Pearson, read the short reviews of five books in Part 1 of “How to Read a Book," including the review of The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life. Download the list of John's 100 must-read here.

Save the Date! Oct. 30, 2025 Irvine, Calif. New and Improved! The Barnabas Group/Orange County is hosting a seminar at Concordia University in Irvine, Calif., on Oct. 30, 2025, Thursday 7:30 – 11:30 a.m. Nonprofit CEOs and board members (and pastors) are invited to learn about “The 8 Big Mistakes to Avoid With Your Nonprofit Board: How Leaders Enrich Their Ministry Results Through God-Honoring Governance.” Presented by John Pearson, the 4th edition of the workbook, available at the seminar, will include EIGHT, not just four BIG mistakes!! More info here. OK…One More Novel! If you still need to squeeze one more novel into your summer reading, I recommend Lee Strobel’s “behind the pulpit” novel about a Chicago megachurch. Read my review of The Ambition: A Novel. And visit the Pails in Comparison Blog for 100+ more book reviews, including this John Grisham novel, The Reckoning.