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Three manuals · 178 checks · Roy Callahan Books

The four-dollar fix a burglar actually cares about

Thirty years of standing in other people's kitchens the morning after, written down. Room by room, door by door — and almost none of it costs money.

  • ✓
    72 checks on the door and the threshold, where it nearly always starts
  • ✓
    61 checks on what your house says about you from the curb
  • ✓
    45 checks for the reader who lives alone — not sold anywhere else
  • ✓
    3 printables you fill in with your family and stick on the fridge
$98$47All three books
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Roy Callahan
“It almost never starts with a crowbar. It starts with a sentence at your door.” Roy Callahan
Never Step Out, The Twelve-Second Read, and Nobody Who Would Notice
As seen on YouTube · @RoyCallahanYT Roy Callahan Books
How it actually happens

He decides in the time it takes to walk past

Researchers at UNC Charlotte interviewed 422 people serving sentences for burglary in North Carolina, Kentucky and Ohio, and asked them how they chose a house.

People nearby

Top of the list. Traffic, somebody home, a neighbor outside, police in the area. Not a product — people.

No way out

A house he cannot leave quickly is a house he skips. Sightlines and neighbors do this; a lock does not.

Signs of attention

Anything that says somebody is paying attention to this house — including a dog inside, and a door that gets answered.

One thing worth saying about that study: it was paid for by the alarm industry, and the finding they publicized was the one about alarms. The finding above is the one that was top of the burglars' own list, and it does not sell anybody anything. That is exactly why these books lead with it. Read the report yourself — Blevins, Kuhns & Lee, University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Before you buy anything

Go outside and check one thing

No email required, no form, no download. This is check 34 from Volume I, printed in full. Do it tonight and you will know whether the rest of this is worth your money.

The peephole that unscrews from the outside

Everything in these books rests on one habit: talk through the door. That only works if you can see who is out there without opening it. On a great many doors, the thing that lets you do that can be taken off from the wrong side.

The part nobody knows. A standard door viewer is not one piece. It is two threaded barrels that screw into each other through the door, and the outer one usually has a slot or a knurled ring so it can be turned. Nothing but friction holds them together.

Go and look — one minute, in daylight:

  1. Stand outside your own front door.
  2. Look at the ring around the viewer. Is there a slot, two notches, or a knurled edge to grip?
  3. Turn it counter-clockwise. Fingers only, no tools.
  4. If it moves at all, it is not fixed. Most that move, move all the way.
The fix, tonight, for about the price of a coffee. Take the viewer out from the inside, put a drop of removable — blue — threadlocker on the threads, and screw it back. It still comes out for a locksmith with a tool. It does not come out for a hand in a hallway.

The honest limit. This does not make your door strong and it is not how anybody gets in. It protects the one habit the rest of the book asks you to build. Every check in all three volumes is written this way — including what it will not do.

The argument

Most of it gets spent in the wrong order

Not that cameras and alarms are useless. That almost everybody buys them first, and buys them instead of the things underneath.

Camera before door

A camera pointed at a door whose strike plate is held by two three-quarter-inch screws is a recording of your own door failing. The screws cost a few dollars. Do those first.

Contract before habit

A monitoring contract runs every month for years. Answering every knock through a shut door costs nothing, works immediately, and is the single thing every burglar interviewed said made them move on.

Hardware before neighbors

Locks slow a person down. A witness stops him. Two neighbors' phone numbers in your phone is free, takes one conversation, and outranks everything else in these three books.

Choose your level

Start with one book, or take all three

Every volume is a complete book on its own. One download, no subscription, nothing to renew.

Never Step Out

Never Step Out

$49$27
  • 72 checks across 8 modules
  • The fifteen sentences used at your door, and what to say back
  • The five-minute hardware audit
  • The people you let in on purpose
  • 47 pages · PDF
Get Volume I
The door and the threshold
All three books
All three volumes

Lock the Door Behind Me

$98$47
  • All 178 checks, all three volumes
  • Volume III — not sold separately
  • The Door Card, for beside the phone
  • The Household Card, signed by everyone
  • The Walk-Around, dated in your own hand
  • Free updates, for as long as they exist
Get all three books
$98 is Volume I plus Volume II at list.
Volume III isn't in that number — it isn't sold anywhere.
The Twelve-Second Read

The Twelve-Second Read

$49$27
  • 61 checks across 8 modules
  • What your mail, bins and windows say
  • The camera you already bought
  • Where he looks first, and where to put things
  • 28 pages · PDF
Get Volume II
The house and the curb
Who wrote this
Roy Callahan

Thirty years of the morning after

I spent thirty years in law enforcement, most of it as a deputy and then sheriff of a small county. A good part of that was standing in other people's kitchens the morning after somebody had been through the house — and sitting across a table from a fair number of the men who did it.

What I kept noticing is that the fix was almost never the thing people had spent money on. It was a habit, or a screw, or a sentence. So I wrote all of it down, room by room, the way I would if I came out to your house.

178Numbered checks
22Modules
3Printables
60Day guarantee
What's inside

Three manuals. 178 things nobody was going to write down.

Never Step Out
Volume I · 72 checks · 8 modules · 47 pages

Never Step Out

Everything that happens at your door, and the four things he measures while you are being polite.

  • The four measurements he takes in ten seconds
  • All fifteen sentences, and the reply to each
  • The glass beside your door, and the chain that is theater
  • The peephole that unscrews from outside
  • Strike plates, hinges and the three-inch screw
  • The door from the garage, treated as what it is
  • One sentence, practiced flat
  • The quote at your kitchen table
  • Groceries, trash night and the walk to your own door
  • The order to do all of it in, starting with what's free
The Twelve-Second Read
Volume II · 61 checks · 8 modules · 28 pages

The Twelve-Second Read

What a stranger learns about your house from the end of your driveway — and how to change what it says.

  • The mail preview somebody else may already get
  • The first initial on the mailbox
  • The bin that never fills, and sets of one
  • The second pair of boots by the door
  • Timers, and why talk radio beats music
  • Who else is on your camera account
  • What footage is actually worth afterwards
  • Post it Tuesday, not Friday
  • Where he looks in the first ninety seconds
  • Reading your own house back, twice a year
Nobody Who Would Notice
Volume III · 45 checks · 6 modules · 23 pages · Collection only

Nobody Who Would Notice

For the reader who lives alone. This one is not about burglars — it is about being unwitnessed, which is the thing I would actually worry about.

  • The date on the back of your smoke alarm
  • The person who would call if you went quiet
  • How to have that conversation, in one sentence
  • Two neighbors, and exactly what to ask for
  • The contractor who takes a deposit and vanishes
  • Never decide the same day
  • The voice on the phone that knows your grandson's name
  • Hang up and call the number you already had
  • The furnace, the step, and February
  • The hour after, and who to call in what order
The one thing that changes

There are no prices in these books

On purpose. A book with prices in it is out of date the month after you buy it, and then it is worth less every year you own it. So where something costs money, the books tell you the band — a few dollars, twenty dollars, the kind of thing you pay a tradesman for — and you get the real number standing in the aisle, in your own town, on the day.

The Walk-Around is dated by you

Twenty checks, four date columns, two years to a sheet. You write the date, in your own hand, and it becomes a record of what you actually did rather than a page that goes stale on a shelf.

Updates are free, and there is a real reason for them

When a check changes because the thing it describes changes, the sheet gets reissued and everybody who bought the collection gets it. That is what the mailing list is for. It is not a newsletter.

60

Sixty days. Zero risk.

Read all three. Do the free checks. If it hasn’t changed a single thing about your house, ask for a refund inside sixty days and you get it in full — no questions, no form, no explanation needed.

Refunds and questions both go through your Payhip receipt — reply to it, or use the contact link on the order page. That reaches me directly.

Keep the printables either way. If you got two neighbors' numbers into your phone and nothing else, this was worth doing.

Last call

It all sits on top of a door

Without a book: you buy the camera, you pay the monthly bill, and the part that actually decides it — the door, the screws, the sentence, the neighbor — never gets touched. That is the ordinary way this goes, and it is expensive.

With them: you work through 178 checks in the order I'd do them in. The first six are free and take fifteen minutes tonight.

$98$47All three books · instant download
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Volume III is not sold separately · 60-day guarantee
Questions from the porch

Honest answers

Is this about guns?

No. There is nothing in any of the three books about weapons, force, or what you may do to defend yourself — not what you may own, not when, not how. Those rules differ by state more sharply than anything else in here, and a confident answer from a stranger in a book could ruin your life. If you want to know your position, ask a lawyer licensed where you live, and ask before anything happens.

Does it tell me what I'm legally allowed to do?

No, and that is deliberate. What you may install, what you may change in a rented home, what your alarm and detector rules are, what recourse you have when a contractor vanishes with a deposit — all of it varies by state, county, city, and by whether you own or rent. Where a check runs into one of those lines, the book says so and names who actually knows: your county consumer protection office, your fire department, a licensed trade, a tenants' service, or a lawyer in your state. Most of those calls are free.

I rent. Is any of this any use?

Most of it, yes. The great majority of the 178 checks are habits, words, objects you move, and things you look at — none of which need a landlord's permission. Where a check does involve changing hardware, it says so, and it says to ask. Volume III in particular was written with renters and people living alone in mind.

Can I buy Volume III on its own?

No. It exists only inside the collection and it is not for sale anywhere, at any price. It was written for a reader the first two volumes lose — somebody who is less worried about a burglar than about going three days with something wrong before anybody noticed. That is why the collection is a different product rather than a discount.

I've already done the obvious things. Is there anything here for me?

The free sample above is the honest test — go and turn your own peephole with your fingers. If it doesn't move, you are ahead of most people, and Volume I's hardware module will still probably find you two or three things. If it does move, you have your answer.

What format is it, and will it go out of date?

PDF, instant download, yours to keep and to print. Nothing to renew and no subscription. There are no prices anywhere in the books precisely so they don't age — that was a design decision, and it is why the one page that would have gone stale was cut instead of shipped.

How do I ask a question, or get a refund?

Through Payhip, where you bought it. Your receipt has a contact link on it — that comes straight to me, and it is the same route for a question about a check, a problem with a download, or a refund inside the sixty days. There is no form to fill in and no reason to explain yourself.

Who is Roy Callahan?

A retired small-county sheriff, thirty years in law enforcement. Names, places and case details in the books and the videos are changed or combined to protect the people involved.