Readers of the long-running Cotton Malone series will be in for quite a shock with Steve Berry’s latest release, THE LIST, a stand-alone novel that is by far the darkest story he has ever written.

As I turned the pages, I was reminded of how I felt when I first read John Grisham’s THE FIRM, though Berry’s novel is far more devious and deadly. The Prologue begins with this very telling and spine-chilling line: “Killing old people was like shooting bottles off a log.” However, it is not necessarily the elderly who are in danger here. Anyone who poses a financial threat to the Southern Republic Pulp and Paper Company are at risk.

"The concept of THE LIST is nothing short of brilliant, and the suspense that Berry is able to infuse it with is simply blood-curdling. I really enjoyed seeing him step away from his Cotton Malone series to bring us something from the dark side of his extremely formidable imagination."

The first cruel and heartless murder occurs when a man posing as a hunter seeking assistance for his friend who had injured himself in the woods ambushes an elderly gentleman who is willing to help them out. This would-be Good Samaritan ends up being killed and is dumped in the lake to float down Brooks Creek.

We then meet our protagonist, Brent Walker, who is returning to Concord, Georgia, where he grew up after having spent the previous 10 years working in Atlanta. Brent is happy to be back as he needs to care for his mother, who is not doing well two years after his father’s death. He has been hired by the Southern Republic Pulp and Paper Company as its assistant general counsel and is coming on board just in time for union contract negotiations. On the other side of the table is the man who once mentored him, Hank Reed.

It should be a straightforward process, but something odd and unsettling happens to Brent. A woman he doesn’t know approaches him. She urges him to read Proverbs 22:3 and states that God have mercy on him. Brent later learns that she is the widow of his predecessor, a young man who allegedly took his own life.

The picture becomes clearer with the introduction of Christopher Bozin, who is quite ill and realizes he may not have much time left. As such, he has decided to shake things up and attempt to atone for some really bad business with which he has been involved --- business that has left blood on his hands and those of his two colleagues, Hamilton Lee and Larry Hughes. The three of them are the brain trust behind the Southern Republic Pulp and Paper Company with Bozin acting as the “money man.” They are discussing the state of their business, with the primary topic being the controversial list that their head of security and Bozin’s team are responsible for checking off.

Some years earlier, in the face of rising costs and competition that was driving their business into potential financial disaster, Bozin, Lee and Hughes came up with an unorthodox way of handling the situation. They targeted recent retirees, as well as current employees, who were running up medical costs due to personal and family illnesses. Their solution was to physically eliminate them, one by one.

Hughes and Lee are nervous, as they never really liked Bozin and now get the impression that he might not be on board with their agreed-upon priorities to stay afloat and competitive. Bozin has kept his serious health issues a secret from his partners and devised a plan to try and expose them. He embeds the list into a file that he knows Reed is going to access during the negotiations. Sure enough, Reed shares this information with Brent. Once they put together the murderous magnitude of what they have uncovered, they realize that they could find themselves on this very same list if they do not tread carefully.

The concept of THE LIST is nothing short of brilliant, and the suspense that Berry is able to infuse it with is simply blood-curdling. I really enjoyed seeing him step away from his Cotton Malone series to bring us something from the dark side of his extremely formidable imagination.