NYT Bestselling Author Steve Berry On Creating ‘The List’, His Newest Suspense
I’m a lawyer and have been for the past 45 years. I stopped actively practicing fifteen years ago. But for the previous thirty years I had my own office. The first ten with a partner, the last twenty on my own. It was located in St. Mary’s, Georgia, a small, coastal community where, for decades, the largest employer was a paper mill. From the 1940s to the 1990s St. Mary’s was definitely a company town. In the mid-1980s (like Brent Walker in The List) I represented the local electrical workers union (IBEW) at the mill, handling employee grievances, contract negotiations, and dealing with members’ problems.
And there were many battles.
Eventually, by the late-1980s, the company decided to retain me. So, just like Brent, I changed teams. One day, during a particularly hard-fought employee grievance before a rather intent arbitrator, a thought occurred to me. What if the company didn’t bother with union contracts or due process? What if they decided to not roll the dice with a random arbitrator to resolve a labor dispute? What if they could actually control their medical and retirement costs with some degree of predictability? Could all that certainty work as a business advantage?
So was born The List.
I wrote the story in 1992, as my second complete manuscript. At the time John Grisham’s, The Firm, was riding high, and it’s easy to see its influence on this story. But The List was never submitted to publishers. The quality was simply not-ready-for-prime-time, so into a drawer it went. Through the years I’d occasionally glance at it, reading bits and pieces, wondering what could be done with the story. During the Covid lockdown in 2020 I decided to give the manuscript a once over. The plot remains 99.9% as it was in 1992, but how it is told got a revamped, as I was able to apply all that I had learned about novel writing during the previous thirty years.
It’s exciting to finally have this story published.
Southern mill towns were a peculiar institution, nearly all of them now gone. The paper mill in St. Mary’s closed in 2001, its buildings razed to the ground. The original owner, most of upper management, and a sizable amount of its work force are no longer with us.
One person, though, is still around.
His name is Richard “Larry” Daley. Hank Reed is based on him. Not in every detail, but definitely in those that matter most. Larry always seemed larger than life. He served for decades as the electrical union’s president and was the long-time mayor of St. Mary’s. He fought with a vengeance on behalf of his union members and was both feared and respected by the company. I learned a lot from watching him.
For a locale I chose a place a hundred and fifty miles north of St. Mary’s in central Georgia. But I patterned the paper mill there after the site that once existed in St. Mary’s (which I visited many times). St. Mary’s is no longer a company town. In the 1980s the massive Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base arrived and changed the local demographics forever. Over the ensuing four decades the population of Camden County grew from 12,000 to over 50,000. The paper mill’s closing in 2001 put nearly 1000 people out of work. That was traumatic, to say the least. I was chairman of the county commission at the time and the company was the county’s single largest taxpayer. It took several years for everyone to adjust to life without it.
Thankfully, though, we survived.
The number one question writers are asked is, Where do you get your ideas from? For me, with this story, it came out of nowhere one day, emerging from the drama around me and the possibilities of what my imagination could add to that reality. I’m glad I didn’t throw that early manuscript away. I’m always asked which one of my books is my favorite. My reply is always the same, I love all my children equally.
But this one is a little extra special.
I hope you enjoy The List.
Discover the Book
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. Two years ago, his father died, and now Brent, hired by Southern Republic Pulp and Paper Company as its assistant general counsel, is returning to care for his ailing mother.
For decades, Southern Republic has invested heavily in Concord, creating a thriving community where its employees live, work, and retire. But the genteel sheen of this quiet town is deceiving, and when a list of cryptic code surfaces, Brent starts to see the cracks.
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. So a plan is set into motion, one that will not only criminally implicate Bozin’s two partners, but also place Brent Walker square in the crosshairs of men who want him dead—with only one course left available.
Find and reveal the shocking secret of the list.
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