Grand Central Publishing
July 2025
The List by Steve Berry has multidimensional characters within a riveting plot.
“This story is a little biographical. My hero is a lawyer in a small Georgian town that works for a paper company. The town is a company town. As with Brent, at one time I was representing the unions and then switched to represent the company. While in a meeting in the 1980s it occurred to me what if they got rid of their problems, not through arbitration, but by killing people to control all their costs. The story was born.”
After a ten-year self-imposed exile, Brent Walker is returning home to Concord, a quaint town in central Georgia nestled close to the Savannah River. Brent left the town he was raised in after his wife and father died. But he returns after being hired by Southern Republic Pulp and Paper Company as its assistant general counsel.
“He was a former prosecutor, practiced law in a small town, and was very successful. He was close to Hank and eventually decided to represent the union, making a name for himself. Unfortunately, he got himself into a bad marriage that ended tragically. He has a lot of guilt because of what happened to his wife. He now tries to stay out of trouble. After leaving for a while, he returns, gets a job with the paper company, and must rise to the occasion.”
For decades, Southern Republic has invested heavily in Concord, creating a thriving community where its employees live, work, and retire. But the civil luster of this quiet town is deceiving, and when a list of cryptic codes surface, Brent starts to see the cracks.
“The plot has a Priority Program. The prologue sets up how the owners are very brutal people. The one plot is what they are doing, while the other characters of Brent, Ashley, and Hank revolved around each other. In some respects, it is a great Shakespearean tragedy, but with a good ending. I wanted to show how the three owners of the company were amoral. They did not care about anything except profits. They decided to kill off their employees to maximize them. Because one of them is dying he has a change of heart and tries to clear his conscience. I hid the crime until about page 50. They are very careful about how they kill.”
Southern Republic’s success is based largely on a highly unorthodox and deadly system to control costs, known only to the three owners of the company. Now, one of them, Christopher Bozin, has had a change of heart. Brent’s return to Concord, a move Bozin personally orchestrated, provides his conscience with a chance at redemption. But his other partners were used to controlling everything since it was a company town. They try to make sure no gets wind of what they are doing which puts Brent, his good friend Hank, and the love of his life, Ashley, in the crosshairs.
This story is a page turner.
