September 10, 2025 • 9 mins
In the vein of David Baldacci, John Grisham, and Harlan Coben—this is Steve Berry like you’ve never read him before. 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. 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 -to find and reveal the shocking secret of the list.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning, Steve. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Good five, sir, dude.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I got to tell you something. I am a book snob,
and the second that your book landed in my hands,
oh my god. Your publisher really put a lot of
love and attention into the pages, into the texture of
the book cover, everything.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Well, thank you. I think it's a pretty package. It
really is.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
It really is. But I got to ask him, and
did you hear that this thing actually came to you
in nineteen ninety two? What I mean? That's like Rockstar
has talked about things like that.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Well, I the original story came to me in the
late eighties when I was in an arbitration hearing, and
it has occurred to me, what would happen if the
company didn't mess with that? But they just started killing people,
you know, and they used murder to control their costs.
And I wrote it in ninety two, but it was
some terrible condition. It was second thing I've ever wrote
in my life, so it was not readable. It went
(00:50):
a door for twenty eight years. I got it out
in COVID. I rewrote it from start to finish, and
that's the book you see today.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
One of the greatest things about this book is the
uniqueness of it is that you go by the days
as well as the dates, and that to me, I
mean it is page by page, a chronological order. I
love that.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Well. That's why I did the chapters that way. Day one,
day two, day three, because there's a there's a ticking
clock going on here that the hero, Brett Walker, doesn't
realize until it's almost too late, that there's this ticking
clock going on against him. And this is a pure
suspense thriller. It's a little different for me. It's like
steep Berry, like you've never read him before. You know,
Normally I'm action history, secrets, conspiracies, but this time it's
(01:31):
just pure action and suspense. It's a If you like Grisham,
you like Baldacci, you like Harlan Coben, You're gonna love
this book.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
The way that you build this story up and time
really is so important inside this book. But as the writer,
what did you go through mentally? Because I mean, to
put it all together and to really make it work
in our eyes, you you had to have lived at first.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I did a lot of it. I did live. That's
why this book's a little special to me. It's a
little autobiographical Hank read the character in There is a
good friend of mine, Larry Daily, Wo's mentioned in the
writer's note in the back. I modeled it after him,
you know, because he's sort of a larger than life character,
and that's what he is in this book. So a
lot of this is stuff that I experienced and I
knew firsthand, which makes the story very special to me.
(02:17):
But I wanted it to be fast. I wanted to
be paced fast. I wanted to go quickly. There's no
secret that the company uses murder to control its calls.
You learned that very early in the book. The unraveling
of that is what this story is about, and how
Brent Walker has caught up in the crosshayers of these killers,
as these three owners are fighting among themselves and he's
(02:39):
in the middle of that. And there's some surprise as
a waiting brand, surprises for the reader, surprises for him
that make his journey even more complicated.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
You speak of surprises, how about this and this this
is going to shock a lot of people. Mark eight
thirty six. What good is it for man to gain
the whole world yet forfeit his soul? I love that
second I came across that.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, that is that is Chris Bosan's problem, and that's
what he's wrestling with. That he gained the world, but
he sold his soul to get it. Now he's dying
and he's decided I'm gonna I'm gonna fix it. But
the other two owners, of course, don't want that to happen.
And that's where the war comes into play. And that's
where Brent is brought right into the middle of that war.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Being on that list. I would love to sit down
with other readers in book clubs or just order to Starbucks,
and I would love to find out if, while reading
the book, if they sat there and thought about, hmm,
I wonder what kind of a list my name is on.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
That's the thing about this story. It has a real
plausibility to it, particularly with all the technology we have
today and all the access to information you can get.
Just imagine if you had bank records, phone records, credit
card records, medical records, you had everything at your disposal
(03:59):
you could laurel about a person. And that's what they do.
They use all of that information to cleverly orchestrate the
deaths of selected people to keep their bottom line. Solid
and there's a plausibility to it. There really is. You
go like, wow, you know it just actually could happen.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Please do not move. There's more with Steve Berry coming
up next. The name of the book, the list from
Steve Berry. Let's get back into that conversation. Concord, Georgia
seems like a quiet, little southern town, oh my god,
until you get involved in these storylines.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
It's a company town on steroids. I lived in a
company town, so I know what it was like. So
I decided to take it to another level. And that's
what that's what Concord is another level. In most company towns,
it's clear the company is in charge of all this stuff.
But in Concord it is not clear. Is you don't
realize the tentacles that the owners have into everyone's life there.
(04:58):
They have extremely a long reach into everyone. And so
I just were able to take it to another level.
And it was fun to it was fun. I think
it make one terrific movie. He make a great movie or.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
A good twelve part binge watch for Netflix.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
That's even better. I like that even better.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
One of my favorite places to go in a book,
the dedication page. I want to know who Richard L.
Daly is.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
He's a friend of mine who taught me a lot
about life and practice of law and government and politics.
He worked at the mill. He high school educated, but
he had a brilliant political mind. He really did. He's
still alive. I went the other day and took him
a book. He didn't know the book existed, and he
(05:42):
didn't know that I had the book. He didn't know
it was going to be published. He's eighty nine years old.
And he was so thrilled that you know, he's a
character in the book and that he's there. And I
told him, when you read it, you're going to recognize
a lot of stuff that you and I did.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Wow, Now, how do you deal with that? Because in
one of my books, I was writing about my and
and he he never talked to me ever. Again, you
got it wrong. That's not the way it really was. Yes,
it was, and oh that was it. That was the
end of the friendship.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
That's a shame. I hope people do it. As I
tried to explain to them, this is fiction. We're making
it up. But you know, in this case, there were
some instances that he and I were participated in. I
don't think you'll have a problem with him because they
were faithfully recounted as they happened. And I don't normally
(06:30):
use real people, real experience. I use names, but I
don't use the real people or personality. I only did
it with Danny Daniels in the Cotton Malone books, who's
a real person, And now with Hank here and Larry Daily.
But both of them are great sports about it. They
love it.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I'm on the corner of walk and don't walk with
my trust for Christopher bosen And, and I'm saying they're
going to join trust him, join not trust him, My God,
keep reading the book. He'll find out more.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
You will. You will. He's the guy that started it all,
he's the guy that came up with it all, and
now he's got this pang of guilt and there's an
irony in it. Eventually there's an irony with him. I
don't want to say anything as a surprise, there's an
irony thing. So Boson is a conflicted character, a lot
(07:21):
of fun named after one of my neighbors here.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Wow, how do you deal with relinquishing the book to readers?
Because I mean, it's your story, it's your idea and
now what it's actually, it's ours now.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
It is And that's the whole point. That's why I
do it. I do it to throw it out there.
It's all up these shawls. Now. I don't have a
problem letting go with it. That's the whole reason I
write it and let it out there. Sometimes I have
a problem when people put things there that aren't there.
You know, they don't exist. But that's just part of
writing novels. People are going to see what they want
to see. This book is just a lot of fun.
(07:54):
It's just a fun read that you can sit down
and delve into and get your troubles for a little
while and see what Brent Walker's trouble is.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yeah, and they want Brent dead. I mean, how do
you deal with that that you know you got Brent.
You're writing about Brent and you're writing about the people
that want him, Dennis, Like, you're you're like two different
personalities here, dude.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, they want him, they want him gone and they
want him out. And Brent's got a rise to the
occasion to save him and Ink and his family because
he's caught. He's caught in everything. These guys are amoral
they don't care. They're going to do anything they have
to do to survive, and they're very good at what
they do. And Brent, but Brent has one advantage that
nobody else ever had, and I won't see what that is,
(08:36):
but he does have an advantage.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Where can people go to find out more about you?
Because right there in the front of your book you
have got every one of your books, which I think
is a brilliant idea because it says I'm not messing around.
I love sharing stories.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah, I'm twenty this is my twenty seventh novel. They
can learn about this book and all of my books
at Steve Berry dot org. Everything is there.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
I love it. Please come back to the show anytime
in the future, Steve. The door is always going to
be open for you.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Will you be brilliant today? Okay, all right,
Good morning, Steve. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Good five, sir, dude.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I got to tell you something. I am a book snob,
and the second that your book landed in my hands,
oh my god. Your publisher really put a lot of
love and attention into the pages, into the texture of
the book cover, everything.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Well, thank you. I think it's a pretty package. It
really is.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
It really is. But I got to ask him, and
did you hear that this thing actually came to you
in nineteen ninety two? What I mean? That's like Rockstar
has talked about things like that.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Well, I the original story came to me in the
late eighties when I was in an arbitration hearing, and
it has occurred to me, what would happen if the
company didn't mess with that? But they just started killing people,
you know, and they used murder to control their costs.
And I wrote it in ninety two, but it was
some terrible condition. It was second thing I've ever wrote
in my life, so it was not readable. It went
(00:50):
a door for twenty eight years. I got it out
in COVID. I rewrote it from start to finish, and
that's the book you see today.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
One of the greatest things about this book is the
uniqueness of it is that you go by the days
as well as the dates, and that to me, I
mean it is page by page, a chronological order. I
love that.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Well. That's why I did the chapters that way. Day one,
day two, day three, because there's a there's a ticking
clock going on here that the hero, Brett Walker, doesn't
realize until it's almost too late, that there's this ticking
clock going on against him. And this is a pure
suspense thriller. It's a little different for me. It's like
steep Berry, like you've never read him before. You know,
Normally I'm action history, secrets, conspiracies, but this time it's
(01:31):
just pure action and suspense. It's a If you like Grisham,
you like Baldacci, you like Harlan Coben, You're gonna love
this book.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
The way that you build this story up and time
really is so important inside this book. But as the writer,
what did you go through mentally? Because I mean, to
put it all together and to really make it work
in our eyes, you you had to have lived at first.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I did a lot of it. I did live. That's
why this book's a little special to me. It's a
little autobiographical Hank read the character in There is a
good friend of mine, Larry Daily, Wo's mentioned in the
writer's note in the back. I modeled it after him,
you know, because he's sort of a larger than life character,
and that's what he is in this book. So a
lot of this is stuff that I experienced and I
knew firsthand, which makes the story very special to me.
(02:17):
But I wanted it to be fast. I wanted to
be paced fast. I wanted to go quickly. There's no
secret that the company uses murder to control its calls.
You learned that very early in the book. The unraveling
of that is what this story is about, and how
Brent Walker has caught up in the crosshayers of these killers,
as these three owners are fighting among themselves and he's
(02:39):
in the middle of that. And there's some surprise as
a waiting brand, surprises for the reader, surprises for him
that make his journey even more complicated.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
You speak of surprises, how about this and this this
is going to shock a lot of people. Mark eight
thirty six. What good is it for man to gain
the whole world yet forfeit his soul? I love that
second I came across that.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, that is that is Chris Bosan's problem, and that's
what he's wrestling with. That he gained the world, but
he sold his soul to get it. Now he's dying
and he's decided I'm gonna I'm gonna fix it. But
the other two owners, of course, don't want that to happen.
And that's where the war comes into play. And that's
where Brent is brought right into the middle of that war.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Being on that list. I would love to sit down
with other readers in book clubs or just order to Starbucks,
and I would love to find out if, while reading
the book, if they sat there and thought about, hmm,
I wonder what kind of a list my name is on.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
That's the thing about this story. It has a real
plausibility to it, particularly with all the technology we have
today and all the access to information you can get.
Just imagine if you had bank records, phone records, credit
card records, medical records, you had everything at your disposal
(03:59):
you could laurel about a person. And that's what they do.
They use all of that information to cleverly orchestrate the
deaths of selected people to keep their bottom line. Solid
and there's a plausibility to it. There really is. You
go like, wow, you know it just actually could happen.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Please do not move. There's more with Steve Berry coming
up next. The name of the book, the list from
Steve Berry. Let's get back into that conversation. Concord, Georgia
seems like a quiet, little southern town, oh my god,
until you get involved in these storylines.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
It's a company town on steroids. I lived in a
company town, so I know what it was like. So
I decided to take it to another level. And that's
what that's what Concord is another level. In most company towns,
it's clear the company is in charge of all this stuff.
But in Concord it is not clear. Is you don't
realize the tentacles that the owners have into everyone's life there.
(04:58):
They have extremely a long reach into everyone. And so
I just were able to take it to another level.
And it was fun to it was fun. I think
it make one terrific movie. He make a great movie or.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
A good twelve part binge watch for Netflix.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
That's even better. I like that even better.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
One of my favorite places to go in a book,
the dedication page. I want to know who Richard L.
Daly is.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
He's a friend of mine who taught me a lot
about life and practice of law and government and politics.
He worked at the mill. He high school educated, but
he had a brilliant political mind. He really did. He's
still alive. I went the other day and took him
a book. He didn't know the book existed, and he
(05:42):
didn't know that I had the book. He didn't know
it was going to be published. He's eighty nine years old.
And he was so thrilled that you know, he's a
character in the book and that he's there. And I
told him, when you read it, you're going to recognize
a lot of stuff that you and I did.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Wow, Now, how do you deal with that? Because in
one of my books, I was writing about my and
and he he never talked to me ever. Again, you
got it wrong. That's not the way it really was. Yes,
it was, and oh that was it. That was the
end of the friendship.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
That's a shame. I hope people do it. As I
tried to explain to them, this is fiction. We're making
it up. But you know, in this case, there were
some instances that he and I were participated in. I
don't think you'll have a problem with him because they
were faithfully recounted as they happened. And I don't normally
(06:30):
use real people, real experience. I use names, but I
don't use the real people or personality. I only did
it with Danny Daniels in the Cotton Malone books, who's
a real person, And now with Hank here and Larry Daily.
But both of them are great sports about it. They
love it.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I'm on the corner of walk and don't walk with
my trust for Christopher bosen And, and I'm saying they're
going to join trust him, join not trust him, My God,
keep reading the book. He'll find out more.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
You will. You will. He's the guy that started it all,
he's the guy that came up with it all, and
now he's got this pang of guilt and there's an
irony in it. Eventually there's an irony with him. I
don't want to say anything as a surprise, there's an
irony thing. So Boson is a conflicted character, a lot
(07:21):
of fun named after one of my neighbors here.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Wow, how do you deal with relinquishing the book to readers?
Because I mean, it's your story, it's your idea and
now what it's actually, it's ours now.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
It is And that's the whole point. That's why I
do it. I do it to throw it out there.
It's all up these shawls. Now. I don't have a
problem letting go with it. That's the whole reason I
write it and let it out there. Sometimes I have
a problem when people put things there that aren't there.
You know, they don't exist. But that's just part of
writing novels. People are going to see what they want
to see. This book is just a lot of fun.
(07:54):
It's just a fun read that you can sit down
and delve into and get your troubles for a little
while and see what Brent Walker's trouble is.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yeah, and they want Brent dead. I mean, how do
you deal with that that you know you got Brent.
You're writing about Brent and you're writing about the people
that want him, Dennis, Like, you're you're like two different
personalities here, dude.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, they want him, they want him gone and they
want him out. And Brent's got a rise to the
occasion to save him and Ink and his family because
he's caught. He's caught in everything. These guys are amoral
they don't care. They're going to do anything they have
to do to survive, and they're very good at what
they do. And Brent, but Brent has one advantage that
nobody else ever had, and I won't see what that is,
(08:36):
but he does have an advantage.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Where can people go to find out more about you?
Because right there in the front of your book you
have got every one of your books, which I think
is a brilliant idea because it says I'm not messing around.
I love sharing stories.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah, I'm twenty this is my twenty seventh novel. They
can learn about this book and all of my books
at Steve Berry dot org. Everything is there.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
I love it. Please come back to the show anytime
in the future, Steve. The door is always going to
be open for you.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Will you be brilliant today? Okay, all right,
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