CANR
WORK TITLE: Think Twice
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PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.harlancoben.com/
CITY: Ridgewood
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: LRC Jan 2021
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born January 4, 1962, in Newark, NJ; son of Carl Gerald and Barbara Coben; married Anne Armstrong (a pediatrician), November 5, 1988; children: four, including Charlotte and Benjamin.
EDUCATION:Amherst College, B.A., 1984.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. The Five (television series), creator, 2015; Une chance de trop (television mini-series), writer and executive producer, 2015; Just un Regard (television mini-series), writer and executive producer; The Stranger (television series), creator and executive producer; Safe (television series), creator and executive producer; The Woods (television series), creator and executive producer. Previously worked in travel industry.
MEMBER:Mystery Writers of American, Sisters in Crime.
AWARDS:Anthony Award for best paperback original novel, World Mystery Conference, and Edgar Award nomination, Mystery Writers of American, both 1996, and Nero Wolfe award nomination, all for Deal Breaker; Edgar Award for best paperback original mystery novel, Mystery Writers of American, Shamus Award for best paperback original novel, Private Eye Writers of America, and OLMA Award for best paperback original, American Online/Microsoft/Internet Newsgroups, all 1997, all for Fade Away; Fresh Talent Award, United Kingdom, c. 1997, for One False Move; Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination in best novel category, Mystery Writers of America, 2002, Le Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle for fiction, France, both for Tell No One; International Book of the Month, Bookspan, 2003, for No Second Chance; “Thumping Good Read” Award, W.H. Smith, for Gone for Good; RBA Prize for Crime Writing, 2010, for Live Wire; Hall of Excellence, Little League Baseball, 2013; Silver Bullet Award, International Thriller Writers Awards, 2019; New England Basketball Hall of Fame.
WRITINGS
Contributor of short stories to periodicals, including the New York Times. Books have been published in forty-six languages.
Tell No One was adapted as the French film Ne le dis à personne, 2006; Deal Breaker was adapted to film, c. 2008; No Second Chance was adapted as a French film, 2015, and a German film (Keine Zweit Chance); Fool Me Once was adapted by Danny Brocklehurst as an eight-part series in 2024. Several novels have been adapted as audiobooks, including No Second Chance, Books on Tape, 2003, Just One Look, Penguin Audio, 2004, and Promise Me, Brilliance Audio, 2006. Numerous books have been adapted into Netflix series, including The Stranger and The Woods in 2020, Stay Close, Gone for Good, and The Innocent in 2021, Hold Tight in 2022, and Missing You in 2025. The Mickey Bolitar series was adapted into
SIDELIGHTS
Harlan Coben made his mark in the 1990s with mystery novels that embrace the worlds of professional sports and high-powered media glitz. Since then he has gone on to write numerous best-selling, standalone thrillers as well as the popular “Myron Bolitar” series. As of 2020, Coben had more than seventy-five million books in print worldwide, and his work has been acknowledged with some of the most prestigious awards for mystery writers, including the Edgar Award, the Shamus Award, and the Anthony Award.
His first novel, Play Dead, concerns a Boston Celtics basketball star, David Baskin, who fakes his own death on his Australian honeymoon. His widow, supermodel Laura Ayars, investigates and finds that the people she wishes to interview about the case have a habit of turning up dead. David, meanwhile, has resurfaced, in disguise and with a new identity, playing the same position he formerly did for the Celtics. The solution to the mystery has to do with a murder that happened thirty years earlier and was witnessed by David’s brother and Laura’s sister.
Library Journal contributor Marylaine Block noted that Play Dead is “an engrossing suspense novel”; the novel is also, Block stated, “primarily great romantic suspense” rather than a sports book. A Publishers Weekly contributor commented that the novel is “manipulative but otherwise engaging.” Noted the reviewer: “Coben manufactures tension primarily by keeping key details out of his narrative.” In School Library Journal, Katherine Fitch, assessing the book’s appeal for young adult readers, wrote that “Coben weaves a delicate web of intrigue,” and she called the book “a fast-moving thriller with a rapidly twisting plot.”
Once again writing in the School Library Journal, Fitch found Coben’s second novel, Miracle Cure, a “fast moving mystery.” Here, the subject is the fictional development of a cure for AIDS by a pair of brilliant researchers, one of whom is murdered, as are several of their clinic’s patients. When sports star Michael Silverman, a friend of the researchers, is diagnosed as HIV-positive, his wife, beautiful television journalist Sara Lowell, begins investigating the clinic murders with the help of secretly gay New York City homicide detective Max Bernstein. The suspects and other involved characters include Sara’s bad-girl sister; the sisters’ father, who is a research rival of the AIDS doctors; a televangelist; and a U.S. senator whose son is a patient at the AIDS clinic.
A Kirkus Reviews contributor questioned the high-glamour aspects of Miracle Cure, while Library Journal contributor A.J. Wright, despite calling the novel’s characters “an uneasy stew of American types,” declared: “Coben keeps the reader’s interest by fleshing out the stereotypes a little bit and moving the plot fast enough to overcome the more incredible aspects.”
In Coben’s standalone novel No Second Chance, Dr. Marc Seidman wakes up in a hospital after being in a coma for twelve days following an attack. Also present at the attack was his wife, who was killed, and his baby daughter, who has been kidnapped. When he pays a ransom to the kidnappers, they take off with the money but do not return his daughter; they contact the doctor months later for more money. This time Seidman sets out to get his daughter back. Writing in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Oline H. Cogdill commented that the “action-laden plot spins on false endings, surprise revelations and a pathos that accentuates the story.” Cogdill continued: “Coben sharply shapes the characters as realistic, flawed human beings capable of extreme courage and cowardice.”
Just One Look, another standalone title, begins with Grace Lawson finding a picture that doesn’t seem to belong in a group of photos she just picked up from being developed. Nevertheless, one of the people in the picture looks like her husband, Jack, when he was a college student. Furthermore, one of the women in the picture has her face crossed out. After revealing the picture to her husband, he quickly disappears, and Grace sets out to look for him. In the process, secrets from both her and her husband’s past come to light. Fletcher, writing in Booklist, noted the author’s ability “to get readers to identify so passionately with the beleaguered principal character that they disappear into the story.” A Publishers Weekly contributor commented that Just One Look “highlights the author’s customary strengths (swift pacing, strong lead characters).” Joe Heim, writing in People, noted: “The tension doesn’t build slowly; it snaps and crackles right from the get-go.”
The Innocent tells the story of Matt Hunter, who, after finding out that his wife is pregnant, has his wife buy a cell phone with picture-taking capabilities so they can record every second of their parenthood. When his wife goes on a business trip, he gets a phone photo sent to him of his wife seemingly having an affair with another man. Hunter, who spent four years in prison for killing another student in college during a brawl, is soon caught up in a mystery that includes a nun’s murder. A Kirkus Reviews contributor commented: “There’s a record number of jaw-dropping plot twists.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer called The Innocent Coben’s “best book to date.” Booklist contributor Fletcher noted the novel’s “intriguing start … [that] hurtles into a fast-paced hunter-and-hunted drama.”
“I prefer to work in the grays,” Coben was quoted as saying in a Kirkus Reviews article about his 2007 thriller, The Woods. “No character comes out of The Woods unscathed or innocent.” The past comes back to trouble a New Jersey country prosecutor named Paul Copeland in this novel. Twenty years earlier, his sister Camille died at a summer camp where he was working as a counselor and where he was supposed to be keeping an eye on her. She had decided to join three other friends in the woods to make out with a boy, and Paul was distracted by his own interest in a girl. The next day, all four of the kids had apparently been murdered, although the body of Camille was not found—only some bloodied clothes were left as evidence. More recently, Paul has lost his loving wife to cancer, and his father has now disappeared while searching for Camille. Left to raise his only daughter by himself, Paul is working on a rape case in which two college fraternity boys are charged. Then the remains of one of Camille’s friends is discovered; this actually stirs up ammunition for the fraternity boys’ wealthy fathers, who are searching for ways to attack Paul by digging up his past. “The exploration of ordinary people with life-shattering secrets is a common thread in Coben’s novels,” pointed out Library Journal contributor Jeff Ayers, and The Woods is no exception. Some critics, however, felt that the author misses his mark with this mystery. “Less than compelling characters fail to compensate for a host of implausibilities,” remarked one Publishers Weekly writer. “All the surprises you’d expect from Coben, but a lot fewer thrills,” a Kirkus Reviews contributor reported. Other reviewers held the opposite view, with Fletcher asserting in Booklist that “Coben has an uncanny knack for getting readers to care deeply about his main characters” in this “gripper.”
Coben followed The Woods with a kind of technothriller called Hold Tight, which brings up a number of issues concerning parents’ supervision of children’s electronic devices. Coben’s “genius is to make the seemingly mundane terrifying,” observed Fletcher in another Booklist review. Coben alternates two seemingly unrelated plots: one featuring a serial killer out to murder women and the other about parents who install a program on their son’s computer that records his every keystroke. They are worried about sixteen-year-old Adam’s possible reactions to the recent suicide of a friend. Through this juxtaposition, the author is able to highlight themes that include the right to privacy and how to judge possible psychopathic behavior versus common teen rebelliousness. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that Coben also addresses the issues of balancing work and family, and honesty within a marriage. “Coben plucks each of these strings like a virtuoso,” concluded the critic.
A further standalone novel from Coben is the 2010 work Caught, a suspense novel about a sexual predator and his possible victims. When journalist Wendy Tynes cooperates with local police in a sting operation to catch sexual predators on film, she and the community are amazed when one of those caught in the act is a well-respected social worker, Dan Mercer. No one can believe this of Mercer, but as Tynes continues to probe and investigate, she uncovers a connection between Mercer and a missing teenage girl.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer dubbed this a “tightly choreographed dance of guilt and innocence, forgiveness and retribution.” For Library Journal contributor Ayers, Caught is both “complex and intricate.” Hartlaub, writing on Bookreporter.com, also had praise for the book, calling it “arguably Coben’s fastest paced and most intricately plotted work.” Hartlaub further noted that “Coben’s trademark ability to navigate sure-footedly through a complex forest of twists and turns is once again present.” Likewise, Washington Post writer Dennis Drabelle commended “the sinuousness of Coben’s rococo plot,” while Booklist reviewer Fletcher termed it “vintage Coben.”
Still another standalone novel is Stay Close, a thriller that features three people haunted by the disappearance of Stewart Green seventeen years earlier in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Megan is a tennis-playing suburban mom with a bit of a shady past as an exotic dancer, and although she now has two children and a husband she loves, she is vaguely dissatisfied with her life. Ray is a former AP photojournalist, but his career has tanked and he finds himself in a dead-end job posing as a paparazzo who panders to celebrity-obsessed rich kids. Broome is a detective who investigated Green’s disappearance and in the years that followed befriended Green’s wife and children. The Green case gets reopened with the disappearance of Carlton Flynn on the same date that Green went missing, and Broome discovers that fourteen men have vanished during Mardi Gras over the past seventeen years. Broome’s efforts are complicated when a pair of sadists who call themselves Ken and Barbie arrive on the scene.
Reviewers responded to Stay Close with applause. A Publishers Weekly contributor, calling the novel “masterful,” remarked that “Coben writes with wit and irony, and his flair for exposing the frail balance point between order and chaos in our lives has never been stronger than in this suspenseful outing.” In Booklist Fletcher called the novel a “tour-de-force” and observed that “Coben excels in descriptions of his characters’ tortured, ruminative inner lives. He also can pull out of their psychological nosedives to deliver some of the most shocking action scenes in current crime fiction.”
Six Years opens as political science professor Jake Fisher sees the love of his life, Natalie, marry surgeon Todd Sanderson, an alumnus of the New England college where Fisher teaches, just weeks after their split. At the wedding, which he attended in sheer disbelief that she would so suddenly break up with him, he promises Natalie that he will never try to contact her. He keeps the promise for six years until he accidentally glimpses a newspaper obituary for Todd. But when he attends the funeral, thinking that he might now be able to reconnect with Natalie, he encounters a tangled mystery. The widow is not Natalie, but a woman named Delia. Natalie’s sister denies that she ever knew Jake. So too does the owner of the café where Jake and Natalie often enjoyed scones. No record exists of the marriage of Natalie and Todd. Further mysteries involve Natalie’s long-absent father, who used to teach at Jake’s college; the son of a vicious mobster involved in a cheating scandal at the college; and Jake’s best friend on the faculty, who, it turns out, is not who he says he is and is a member of a mysterious organization. Jake frantically tries to unravel the mystery and resolve issues surrounding the identity of the woman he thought he loved while often fighting for his life.
For Fletcher, writing in Booklist, Six Years was “riveting.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor had reservations about the novel, observing: “But the discovery of a clue that begins to unravel the mystery also sends the tale spiraling past the bounds of plausibility, even for a thriller, until Jake’s quest for the truth entangles benevolent conspiracies, hired killers, multiple disappearances, the Mafia and all the people besides Natalie that Jake has held nearest and dearest.” A reviewer to Dear Author, in contrast, called the novel “compulsively readable” and explained: “Coben is a superb suspense writer. He wastes few words here and though the reader gleans early the overt reason Natalie vanished, the specifics of that remain tantalizingly out of reach. Everyone Jake talks to, indeed every conversation he has, leads inexorably to the novel’s tense climax.” The reviewer added: “This is one of those thrillers that, as soon as I finished it, I read it again just to see all that, though right under my reading glasses, I’d not understood the significance of the first time around.” Finally, Art Taylor, in a review on the Washington Post Book World, agreed: “Harlan Coben’s readers know him as the master of this type of story: a life suddenly unraveling, the past summoned back into a swiftly shifting present, secrets peeling back to reveal more secrets.” Taylor went on to enthuse: “What’s impressive here is how narrowly constructed the story actually is, with the plot repeatedly circling back on itself, moving ever homeward rather than further into unknown territory, and leaving nearly nothing—minor characters, seemingly incidental details, stray remarks—wasted. … The beauty of Coben’s craftsmanship here is how often he can lure us into not perceiving what’s clearly right in front of our eyes.”
Once again the past intertwines with the present, this time in Missing You. New York City police detective Kat Donovan has not dated in years, but when she receives a gift subscription to an online dating site, she decides to investigate the possibilities. Amazingly, as she browses through profiles on the site, she discovers Jeff Raynes, her former finacé who dumped her eighteen years earlier. Although she long ago got over Jeff, she cannot resist dropping him a note, but his reactions puzzle her. At first, he says that he does not remember her. Then he greets her with affection but says that it would be better if they did not have contact with each other. Then, a college student from Connecticut, Brandon Phelps, arrives in New York to ask Kat’s help in finding his missing mother. A further complication arises when Kat visits Monte Leburne, a contract killer convicted years earlier of shooting her father, Henry Donovan. Leburne is dying, and in a drug-induced haze, he denies having killed the elder Donovan. Suddenly, it seems as though Kat cannot trust anyone. Jeff appears to have vanished again. Brandon Phelps is clearly hiding something. Her father’s former partner, Captain Thomas Stagger, is clearly withholding information about Donovan’s death. Even her judo instructor and her mother seem to be hiding secrets.
Some critics had slightly mixed reactions to Missing You. In Booklist, Fletcher praised the novel for its “beautifully crafted plot,” but she also observed: “Coben’s meticulous plotting and his incorporation of the technology are first-rate. His characterization and dialogue? Not so much.” For Fletcher, the characters were “cardboard.” Similarly, a Kirkus Reviews contributor was of two minds, noting: “The setup is irresistible, the twists generously piled on and the climax suitably pulse-pounding, even though best-selling Coben is hard-pressed to tie all those complications together or produce a payoff that rises to their deliciously suspenseful levels.” In contrast, a Publishers Weekly reviewer enthused: “Once again, Coben has brilliantly used a current trend, in this case Internet dating, to create a can’t-put-it-down thriller.” Daneet Steffens, in a review in the Boston Globe, remarked: “As always, Coben’s storytelling and deft, clean language propel you through the book—this one’s a slow-but-steady burner that picks up in the second half—and he’s a dab hand when it comes to developing interesting, engaging characters.” Finally, Ayers, reviewing the novel on NorthJersey.com, concluded: “Coben has a knack for creating realistic characters that are either haunted by the past or forced to live with decisions they wish they could change. This is a dive-in, lose-sleep and miss-your-bus-stop reading experience.”
The title character of The Stranger speaks to upstanding citizen and well-known attorney Adam Price, tears his life apart, and promptly disappears. While Adam is at an American Legion Hall event, the stranger informs him that his wife, Corinne, faked her last failed pregnancy. The stranger even tells Adam how he can confirm the claim. When Adam confronts his wife with the revelation, she disappears as swiftly as the stranger, and Adam is left to watch over their two sons. The story is set in the tiny suburb of Cedarfield, New Jersey, and as Adam searches desperately for Corinne, his investigation reveals a conspiracy that will rock the very foundations of his town.
Discussing his fondness for writing missing-person cases in a Huffington Post online interview, Coben told Mark Rubinstein: “It’s an intriguing scenario. A missing person could be alive or dead. There’s hope. I love writing about hope. Hope can make your heart soar, or can crush your heart like an egg shell. For me, missing people ratchet up the emotion. Unlike in a murder mystery, there’s more than justice being served in solving the crime; you can have full redemption when the person is found. I love the possibilities disappearances present.”
Praising this approach in Kirkus Reviews, a critic declared that the author “can always be relied on to generate thrills from the simplest premises, but his finest tales maintain a core of logic throughout the twists. This 100-proof nightmare ranks among his most potent.” Ayers, writing in the Salt Lake Tribune, was also impressed, and he observed that “real life doesn’t come wrapped up in a pretty box, and this page-turner is one stranger that readers will want to meet.” As Amanda Orr pointed out in her Houston Chronicle assessment, “ The Stranger satisfies reader curiosity about what might be going on behind the securely locked doors of our oh-so-perfect neighbors.” Orr went on to comment that “Coben takes a metaphorical time bomb comprising the private shame couples and families keep from one other, and launches it toward the one person it will hurt most. The Stranger doesn’t stick around long enough to see the destruction because he’s on a mission to move to the next target.” In the words of online Express correspondent Jon Coates, “the twists come satisfyingly thick and fast as the plots merge before the tangled web of events unravels into an enjoyable and somewhat surprising conclusion.” Fletcher, writing again in Booklist, was laudatory as well, and she found that Coben “mines the potential of contemporary technology to destroy lives.” Furthermore, she advised, “the conceptual hook here is a stunner.”
The standalone novel Fool Me Once, which appeared in 2016, concerns Maya Burkett, a military veteran and mother who witnesses the fatal shooting of her husband, Joe, in New York City’s Central Park. For security, she installs a hidden camera to monitor her two-year-old daughter, Lily—and finds images of her husband on it. Maya’s nanny implies that the traumatized widow is imagining things, then disappears. The police officer investigating Joe’s death then finds a link between it and the murder of Maya’s sister, Claire, while Maya was serving in Kuwait. The evidence leads to the discovery of many secrets in Joe’s wealthy family, and as the mystery unravels Maya is haunted by her wartime experiences and confronted by the whistle-blower whose revelations about her complicity in civilian deaths drove her out of the Army.
Like many of his works, Fool Me Once earned Coben critical praise for his complex plotting and strong characters. The novel “hooks you like a Hemingway marlin and no matter how you thrash about, lands you with a shocking thud,” related Tim O’Connell in the Florida Times-Union. Maya, meanwhile, makes the book “Coben’s tribute to the modern American woman,” O’Connell added. Huffington Post online reviewer Jackie K. Cooper, describing Maya as “smart, aggressive, independent and combat trained,” remarked that “you can feel the pleasure Coben took in creating her and these situations.” The author, Cooper continued, “is a master of his craft and a wizard with words.” A Publishers Weekly contributor used similar imagery, saying: “Coben is like a skilled magician saving the best, most stunning trick for the very end.”
A Real Book Spy critic termed the novel “an absolute work of genius” and went on to explain: “ Fool Me Once is the type of story that you don’t just get lost in, you find yourself entranced by it and hanging on the author’s every word. You’ll get all the same effects as a day spent at the amusement park riding roller coasters, but for a lot less money and without having to stand in line.” A Kirkus Reviews commentator commended Coben’s “masterfully paced plotting” and his “ability to root all the revelations in deeply felt emotions,” then summed up the story as “a tale guaranteed to fool even the craftiest readers a lot more than once.” Cynthia Price, writing in Xpress Reviews, concluded that Coben “has done it again with this fast-paced smart thriller.”
In Don’t Let Go, Detective Nap Dumas is intrigued after hearing that the fingerprints of his ex-girlfriend from high school, Maura, were found in the car of a murdered police sergeant in a neighboring state. Maura had disappeared fifteen years prior, the same night that Nap’s twin brother, Leo, and his girlfriend were hit by a train. The sergeant, along with everyone else mentioned, were all part of their high school’s conspiracy club. When another member of the club is murdered, Nap goes to find the only other surviving member of the club to find out what is happening now and perhaps even what happened on that fateful night fifteen years earlier when his brother died.
In a review in MBR Bookwatch, Gloria Feit mentioned that “the reader is kept in suspense … throughout the book, until its stunning denouement.” Also reviewing the novel in MBR Bookwatch, Theodore Feit “recommended” Don’t Let Go, pointing out that “Coben concludes the story in a completely unexpected manner.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor opined that “this may be the first time most of perennially bestselling Coben’s readers will beat his hard-used hero to the solution.”
In the thriller Run Away, Manhattan-based financial analyst Simon Greene’s comfortable life is disrupted when his twenty-one-year-old daughter falls into a life of drug use with a man ten years older than her. Paige runs away from home and is eventually found panhandling in Central Park by Simon. He tries to convince her to return home but is arrested for assault after punching her boyfriend. When Paige’s boyfriend is found murdered, Simon is presumed to be responsible, leading him to figure out what really happened before his family is completely torn apart. Booklist contributor Connie Fletcher observed: “Though marred a little by too much description, which slows the narrative, this remains solid Coben.”
In The Boy from the Woods, private investigator Wilde was found in the woods of New Jersey thirty-four years earlier with no memory of how he was raised and survived for as long as he did. Adept at hunting and tracking, Wilde is hired by a celebrity criminal attorney to help find a classmate of her grandson who went missing. Wilde learns that a great deal of misinformation from the girl’s family is blocking his path to solving the disappearance. A contributor to Hot Press noted that “eagle-eyed readers might be able to discern who’s up to no good before their reveal but that’s not to take anything away from Coben’s way with a typewriter.” Writing in Her, Keeley Ryan claimed that “each one of the characters is so carefully crafted … which, partnered with the fast-paced and gripping plot progression, makes it a book that you won’t forget any time soon.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor commented that “readers who can tune out all the subplots will find the kidnappers easy to spot, but Coben finds room for three climactic surprises, one of them a honey.”
In Win, Coben gives the privileged Windsor Horne Lockwood III, from his “Myron Bolitar” series, the opportunity to feature as the protagonist in this standalone. In the apartment of a murdered New Yorker, police find a stolen painting that belonged to Win’s family and one of Win’s monogrammed suitcases. With more investigating, Win is further linked to the Jane Street Six group that bombed a building in the 1970s and went missing afterward. Win’s uncle had died in that explosion, and his cousin, whom he had lent that suitcase to, had been kidnapped and brutalized in a case that was never solved. Win uses this man’s death as an opportunity to open up some old wounds in an attempt to find closure and also bring justice to those who were responsible. On his eponymously named website, Simon McDonald reasoned that “ Win is a breeze, the definition of a perfect beach read, laced with plenty of moral ambiguity and pockmarked with action, and the author’s established cracking dialogue and wit.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor commented that the novel is “densely plotted and replete with incident.”
Coben went on to develop a new investigative hero in other novels, which include Deal Breaker and the 1996 book Dropshot. As their titles imply, the series protagonist is a sports agent, but Myron Bolitar is anything but typical. An aging child who still lives in his parents’ basement despite a successful career as an attorney and agent (and as a basketball player before that), Bolitar plays TV-trivia games and hangs around with one Windsor Horne Lockwood III (“Win”), a lethally powerful young man of patrician ancestry who is devoted to the watching of his own X-rated home videos. The murder in Dropshot is that of Valerie Simpson, a former teenage tennis phenomenon who is trying for a comeback after a serious decline; she is shot dead at the Food Court of the U.S. Open, while another young prodigy, an African American former street kid named Duane Richwood, serves the ball for match point. Both Valerie and Duane were Myron’s clients, so he becomes involved in the case.
Publishers Weekly contributor Maria Simson commented that the novel’s “rapid-fire dialogue” reminded her of the “Fletch” novels by Gregory McDonald. “Dry humor and a self-deprecating attitude make Myron an appealing hero, and minor characters are delineated with attitude and verve,” Simson wrote. Margo Kaufman, reviewing Dropshot for the Los Angeles Times Book Review, wrote that the plot twists were not surprising but that Coben’s “depiction of the sports marketing scene is hilarious.” Armchair Detective contributor Ronald C. Miller called the novel “a solid mystery with an interesting sports background, a fast-paced plot, witty dialogue, and a you’ll-never-guess-whodunit denouement.” He added: “Harlan Coben brings a new and exciting voice to the mystery novel.”
Coben returns to his hero Myron Bolitar in Promise Me. After overhearing two teenage girls talk about driving drunk and getting them to promise to call him rather than do it again, Bolitar receives a call from one a few nights later and drives her to a friend’s house. When the girl disappears without ever making it home, Bolitar decides it is his duty to find her. A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote that the author “piles on the plot twists, false leads, violent set pieces and climactic surprises.” Writing in Booklist, Connie Fletcher praised the novel’s “melding of high suspense and high technology with a somewhat battered, very canny, questing hero.” Adam B. Vary, writing in Entertainment Weekly, pointed out the author’s “skillful pacing and truly surprising turns of plot.”
In Long Lost, the sports and entertainment agent is on the trail of international terrorists in Europe. Accepting an invitation from a former lover, a television journalist, Myron travels to Paris only to discover that the former husband of his paramour, an investigative journalist, has been killed. Myron becomes a prime suspect and sets off on a chase across Europe trying to prove his innocence and to learn the momentous secret that the man was about to publish. In the process he manages to squash the plot of terrorists that is “as imaginative as it is preposterous,” according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer.
A Kirkus Reviews writer found this case “as twisty and ambitious as Coben’s highly successful standalones.” Booklist reviewer Joanne Wilkinson similarly termed the novel an “action-packed thriller with a horrific yet credible premise,” and the Publishers Weekly contributor noted that “Bolitar fans will cheer their hero every step of the way.”
Bolitar is featured once again in the 2011 novel Live Wire. Here the sports agent and part-time private eye comes to the aid of a former tennis professional who is attempting to prove the paternity of her eight-month-old unborn child. Readers are also brought into Bolitar’s back story more in this series addition, with one subplot involving his father, who suffers a severe heart attack, and another involving his estranged sister-in-law and her involvement with drugs and rock singers.
“Fans will enjoy the change of focus,” wrote Jerry P. Miller in Library Journal. A Publishers Weekly reviewer also had a high assessment of this tenth series installment, noting that this “explosively fast thriller will leave fans clamoring for more.” On the other hand, a Kirkus Reviews contributor found this “the most conventional of Myron’s recent cases …, heavy with cheesy cliffhangers and eye-popping coincidences.” Still, the reviewer felt that “fans will be rewarded by the nonstop plot twists Coben must have patented.”
After several years without a novel centering on Myron Bolitar, Coben published Home in 2016. This book has Bolitar trying to help his friend Win find two boys who were kidnapped ten years earlier, when both were six years old—Win’s nephew Rhys and a neighbor, Patrick. An e-mail to Win indicates the boys are in London, so he travels there and sees a youth he thinks is Patrick. He and Myron arrange to pay a ransom for the boys, but their action does not produce the desired result. They realize there is much they have yet to discover about the abductions and the fate of the young people.
Some reviewers welcomed the return of Bolitar in a story full of fascinating complications. “There’s more than one shocking twist here, which makes for an exciting, unpredictable journey,” related Katie Lawrence in Xpress Reviews. A commentator to Real Book Spy offered similar praise. “Like a magician who waves his hand to draw your attention in order to distract you from something else that’s happening, Coben continues to be the undisputed king of never-saw-it-coming twists and turns,” the critic remarked. “Just when you think you have it all figured out, he’ll stun you again and again.” Booklist contributor Rebecca Vnuk noted: “There are plenty of red herrings along the way to the neat (too neat?) conclusion.”
The novel, however, has warmth as well, remarked Jackie K. Cooper, writing on the Huffington Post. Even though the mystery concerns “a heinous crime,” the author “manages to introduce some of the most tender moments he has ever written about Myron’s relationship with his parents,” Cooper observed. “He also provides this story with one of the best endings he has ever conceived.” In another online publication, Shots, Ali Karim likewise praised the book’s denouement. “The ending is one that will take even the die-hard Myron Bolitar reader by total surprise,” Karim reported. “The skill of Harlan Coben is illustrated by the ease that this novel uncoils, with humour and empathy striating the twisty narrative.”
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In The Match, Coben wrote a sequel to The Boy from the Woods. The story follows Wilde, now in his forties, as he submits a DNA sample to one of the popular genealogy websites, hoping to discover something about his past. That eventually leads to finding out about his biological father. Wilde decides to meet him, but doing so ends up being significantly more complicated than he expects. A second cousin ends up disappearing, and Wilde’s attempt to track him down leads to forays into reality TV and battling internet trolls. Along the way, he even becomes the prime suspect in a murder. Wilde starts to wonder if he has been ensnared in a wide-ranging conspiracy.
Lesa Holstine, in Library Journal, called the book “topical” and a “suspenseful novel guaranteed to be a hit.” A reviewer in Publishers Weekly wrote that the story features “plenty of exciting action.” Connie Fletcher, in Booklist, agreed, writing that “the vigilante subplot provides enough excitement to keep the legion of Coben fans engaged.”
[CLOSE NEW]
“Mickey Bolitar” series
Coben inaugurated another new series with his 2011 novel Shelter. This represented also a new direction in writing for the author, for it is aimed at the young adult market, featuring Myron Bolitar’s high school nephew, Mickey Bolitar. Following the death of his father in a car crash and with his mother in rehab, Mickey is living with his uncle and quickly takes on Myron’s penchant for investigation. Mickey’s girlfriend, Ashley, suddenly disappears and he decides to try to trace her, aided by friends Spoon and Ema. However, Mickey is surprised and shocked by what he discovers, realizing that he never really knew Ashley at all. Meanwhile, he is also trying to find out more information about his deceased father, and in doing so discovers that there may be a connection to his missing girlfriend.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer found this a “strong start to the series” and commented that the author’s “semi-noir style translates well to YA.” Similarly, a Kirkus Reviews contributor called Shelter a “not-bad-at-all entry into the teen market for this adult author.” Higher praise came from School Library Journal writer Diana Pierce, who noted: “Edgy and action-filled, the novel has interesting, likable characters, and it should fly off the shelves.”
The series continues with Seconds Away, which has high school sleuth Mickey Bolitar finding trouble again. After helping in the rescue of a schoolmate, Mickey is shown a picture of a Nazi war criminal responsible for the deaths of thousands during World War II. The man in the picture looks startlingly like the paramedic who pronounced Mickey’s father dead in Shelter. Mickey’s life is further complicated when his friend Rachel is wounded and her mother is killed by an intruder. The growing attraction between Rachel and Mickey threatens her boyfriend, basketball star Troy Taylor, who is also threatened by Mickey’s skills on the court, and since Troy’s father is the chief of police, Mickey comes to be treated like a suspect. As Mickey tries to unravel the mysteries with his outcast friends Ema and Spoon, he fails to notice the arrival of movie star Angelica Wyatt, who is managed by Mickey’s uncle Myron.
A Kirkus Reviews critic commented that “Coben deftly weaves these multiple plot threads into a compelling whole.” The critic concluded by calling the novel “an involving thriller that moves like lightning.” Rebecca Denham was lukewarm about the novel. Although she wrote in Voice of Youth Advocates that “the character development is solid, … and readers will enjoy Mickey’s internal dialogue as well as his relationships with Ema and Spoon,” she added that “generally, it is a decent read, but it lacks the depth of some other young adult thrillers.” Angela Leeper, however, in a review in Booklist, was more enthusiastic, writing that “Mickey’s fast-paced, first-person narration won’t disappoint his growing fan base. The satisfying conclusion leaves enough open-ended questions to continue this gripping series.”
In addition to his writing, Coben is also the editor of Mystery Writers of America Presents Death Do Us Part: New Stories about Love, Lust, and Murder. Written by members of the Mystery Writers of America, the stories are primarily about love that typically end in disaster. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called Coben’s contribution to the anthology a “spectacular shocker.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that “fans of quality short fiction should be satisfied.”
Coben also edited, along with Otto Penzler, The Best American Mystery Stories 2011, the fifteenth such compilation in that ongoing enterprise. Here Coben gathers twenty mystery, thriller, and suspense writers, including Joe R. Lansdale, Richard Lange, S.J. Rozan, Ed Gorman, Loren D. Estleman, Lawrence Block, Charles McCarry, and Harry Hunsicker, among others. Bookreporter.com reviewer Joe Hartlaub noted of this work: “The value of this collection is that there is something appealing for virtually everyone within, from the most casual of fans to the most serious aficionado. At the same time, one is almost certain to encounter something new and unexpected.” Hartlaub added: “With author biography and comments, and a list of other distinguished stories, The Best American Mystery Stories 2011 would be worth buying at twice the price in any format.” Similar praise for the collection came from a Kirkus Reviews contributor who wrote: “It has its highs and lows, but the best of Coben’s Best is really first-rate.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer likewise termed this an “excellent” edition.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Armchair Detective, March 22, 1996, Ronald C. Miller, review of Dropshot, p. 242.
Booklist, March 1, 2004, Connie Fletcher, review of Just One Look, p. 1100; March 1, 2005, Connie Fletcher, review of The Innocent, p. 1101; April 1, 2006, Connie Fletcher, review of Promise Me, p. 4; July 1, 2006, David Pitt, review of Mystery Writers of America Presents Death Do Us Part: New Stories about Love, Lust, and Murder, p. 37; February 15, 2007, Connie Fletcher, review of The Woods, p. 4; March 1, 2008, Connie Fletcher, review of Hold Tight, p. 29; January 1, 2009, Joanne Wilkinson, review of Long Lost, p. 22; February 1, 2010, Connie Fletcher, review of Caught, p. 6; September 15, 2011, Connie Fletcher, review of Shelter, p. 64; February 1, 2012, Connie Fletcher, review of Stay Close, p. 36; October 1, 2012, Angela Leeper, review of Seconds Away, p. 92; March 1, 2013, Connie Fletcher, review of Six Years, p. 26; March 1, 2014, Connie Fletcher, review of Missing You, p. 22; March 1, 2015, Connie Fletcher, review of The Stranger, p. 26; January 1, 2016, Daniel Kraus, review of The Magical Fantastical Fridge, p. 98; September 1, 2016, Rebecca Vnuk, review of Home, p. 56; December 15, 2018, Connie Fletcher, review of Run Away, p. 87; February 1, 2020, Connie Fletcher, review of The Boy from the Woods, p. 25; February 1, 2022, Connie Fletcher, review of The Match, p. 23; March 1, 2023, Connie Fletcher, review of I Will Find You, p. 29.
Detroit Free Press, May 4, 2005, Ron Bernas, review of The Innocent.
Entertainment Weekly, April 30, 2004, Adam B. Vary, review of Just One Look, p. 168; April 29, 2005, Jennifer Reese, review of The Innocent, p. 155; April 28, 2006, Adam B. Vary, review of Promise Me, p. 139; April 20, 2007, Paul Katz, review of The Woods, p. 67.
Europe Intelligence Wire, June 3, 2006, review of Promise Me.
Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, FL), April 2, 2016, Tim O’Connell, “‘Fool Me Once’ Is Harlan Coben at His Best.”
Houston Chronicle, April 3, 2015, Amanda Orr, “Harlan Coben Explores Suburban Secrets in The Stranger.”
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 1991, review of Miracle Cure, p. 1106; March 15, 2004, review of Just One Look, 239; May 21, 2004, “‘Looking Good,” book rankings, p. 85; March 1, 2005, review of The Innocent, p. 244; March 15, 2006, review of Promise Me, p. 263; June 15, 2006, review of Mystery Writers of America Presents Death Do Us Part, p. 602; February 1, 2007, review of The Woods, p. 7; February 15, 2007, review of The Woods, p. 7; February 1, 2009, review of Long Lost; February 15, 2011, review of Live Wire; August 15, 2011, review of Shelter; October 15, 2011, review of The Best American Mystery Stories 2011; September 1, 2012, review of Seconds Away; March 15, 2013, review of Six Years; March 15, 2014, review of Missing You; September 1, 2014, review of Found; February 15, 2015, review of The Stranger; December 15, 2015, review of The Magical Fantastical Fridge; February 1, 2016, review of Fool Me Once; August 1, 2017, review of Don’t Let Go; January 1, 2019, review of Run Away; January 15, 2020, review of The Boy from the Woods; January 1, 2021, review of Win; April 15, 2024, review of Think Twice.
Library Journal, April 1, 1990, Marylaine Block, review of Play Dead, p. 136; November 1, 1991, A.J. Wright, review of Miracle Cure, p. 130; May 1, 2004, Jeff Ayers, review of Just One Look, p. 139; April 1, 2005, Jeff Ayers, review of The Innocent, p. 84; May 1, 2006, Jeff Ayers, review of Promise Me, p. 77; March 15, 2007, Jeff Ayers, review of The Woods, p. 56; March 1, 2010, Jeff Ayers, review of Caught, p. 73; February 15, 2011, Jerry P. Miller, review of Live Wire, p. 99; March, 2022, Lesa Holstine, review of The Match, p. 121.
Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 10, 1996, Margo Kaufman, review of Dropshot, p. 11.
MBR Bookwatch, October 1, 2017, Gloria Feit, review of Don’t Let Go; October 1, 2017, Theodore Feit, review of Don’t Let Go.
Orlando Sentinel, May 26, 2004, Nancy Pate, review of Just One Look.
People, May 3, 2004, Joe Heim, review of Just One Look, p. 47.
PR Newswire, August 12, 2003, “Harlan Coben’s Gone for Good voted W.H. Smith Thumping Good Read of the Year.”
Publishers Weekly, April 6, 1990, review of Play Dead, p. 101; February 5, 1996, Maria Simson, review of Dropshot, p. 82; March 29, 2004, review of Just One Look, p. 36; May 10, 2004, Daisy Maryles, “It’s Coben Time,” p. 16; December 20, 2004, John F. Baker, “Big Deal at Dutton for Coben,” p. 10; March 7, 2005, review of The Innocent, p. 50; March 6, 2006, review of Promise Me, p. 48; June 5, 2006, review of Mystery Writers of America Presents Death Do Us Part, p. 40; February 12, 2007, review of The Woods, p. 62; February 18, 2008, review of Hold Tight, p. 136; February 9, 2009, review of Long Lost, p. 30; January 25, 2010, review of Caught, p. 91; January 31, 2011, review of Live Wire, p. 29; August 29, 2011, reviews of The Best American Mystery Stories 2011, p. 46, and Shelter, p. 67; January 30, 2012, review of Stay Close, p. 35; January 27, 2014, review of Missing You, p. 170; November 2, 2015, review of The Magical Fantastical Fridge, p. 82; February 1, 2016, review of Fool Me Once, p. 46; January 13, 2020, review of The Boy from the Woods, p. 38; December 21, 2020, review of Win; January 31, 2022, review of The Match, p. 52; January 23, 2023, review of I Will Find You, p. 50.
Salt Lake Tribune, April 7, 2015, Jeff Ayers, review of The Stranger.
San Jose Mercury News, April 21, 2004, John Orr, review of Just One Look.
School Library Journal, October 1, 1990, Katherine Fitch, review of Play Dead, p. 150; May 1, 1992, Katherine Fitch, review of Miracle Cure, p. 151; September 1, 2011, Diana Pierce, review of Shelter, p. 148.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel, May 5, 2003, Oline H. Cogdill, review of No Second Chance; April 28, 2004, Oline H. Cogdill, review of Just One Look; April 27, 2005, Oline H. Cogdill, review of The Innocent; April 26, 2006, Oline H. Cogdill, review of Promise Me; August 9, 2006, Oline H. Cogdill, review of Deal Breaker.
Today, April 8, 2011, Al Roker, “Interview: Harlan Coben Discusses His Book, Live Wire.”
Voice of Youth Advocates, December 1, 2012, Rebecca Denham, review of Seconds Away, p. 465.
Washington Post, March 29, 2010, Dennis Drabelle, review of Caught, p. C3.
Writer, September 1, 2006, Leslie Garisto Pfaff, “In the Gray Zone with Harlan Coben,” p. 20.
Xpress Reviews, March 4, 2016, Cynthia Price, review of Fool Me Once; September 2, 2016, Katie Lawrence, review of Home.
ONLINE
BookPage, http://www.bookpage.com/ (December 26, 2006), Stephanie Swilley, “Harlan Coben Tells All.”
Bookreporter.com, http://www.bookreporter.com/ (December 26, 2006), Joe Hartlaub, reviews of Promise Me, The Innocent, Just One Look, and Gone for Good; Bob Rhubart, review of No Second Chance; interview with author; (December 26, 2010), Joe Hartlaub, review of Caught; (December 30, 2010), Joe Hartlaub, review of Long Lost; (March 28, 2011), Joe Hartlaub, review of Live Wire; (September 29, 2011), Joe Hartlaub, review of Shelter; (November 3, 2011), Joe Hartlaub, review of The Best American Mystery Stories 2011.
BookTrib, https://booktrib.com/ (March 9, 2023), Millie Naylor Hast, author interview.
Boston Globe, http://www.bostonglobe.com/ (March 26, 2014, Daneet Steffens, review of Missing You.
Curled Up with a Good Book, http://www.curledup.com/ (May 23, 2008), Luan Gaines, review of The Woods, Angela McQuay, review of The Woods.
Dear Author, http://dearauthor.com/ (April 10, 2013), review of Six Years.
Express, http://www.express.co.uk/ (April 3, 2015), Jon Coates, review of The Stranger.
Harlan Coben website, https://www.harlancoben.com (March 20, 2025).
Her, https://www.her.ie/ (January 14, 2021), Keeley Ryan, review of The Boy from the Woods.
Hot Press, https://www.hotpress.com/ (March 26, 2020), Pat Carty, review of The Boy from the Woods; May 13, 2022, Pat Carty, author interview.
Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (March 25, 2015), Mark Rubinstein, author interview; (March 25, 2016), Jackie K. Cooper, “Harlan Coben’s ‘Fool Me Once’ Gives Readers Another Surprising Twist”; (September 21, 2016), Jackie K. Cooper, “‘Home’ Is Another Excellent Novel by Harlan Coben.”
Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/ (November 10, 2011), information on author’s film work.
Irish Examiner, https://www.irishexaminer.com/ (April 22, 2023), Ed Power, author interview.
London Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com (January 8, 2022), James McMahon, author interview; August 3, 2024, Rosanna Greenstreet, author interview.
Mickey Bolitar Series website, http://www.mickeybolitar.com (June 19, 2014), author profile.
New York Times Book Review, http://www.nytimes.com/ (March 20, 2014), “Harlan Coben: By the Book.”
NorthJersey.com, http://www.northjersey.com/ (March 20, 2014), Jeff Ayers, review of Missing You.
Real Book Spy, https://therealbookspy.com/ (September 6, 2016), review of Home; (November 18, 2016), review of Fool Me Once.
Shots, http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/ (November 18, 2016), Ali Karim, review of Home.
Simon McDonald, https://writtenbysime.com/ (January 4, 2021), Simon McDonald, review of Win.
Variety, https://variety.com/ (February 14, 2020), Pat Saperstein, “Bestselling Author Harlan Coben on ‘The Stranger’ and Adapting His Novels for Netflix Around the World.”
Washington Post Book World, http:// www.washingtonpost.com/ (March 25, 2013), Art Taylor, review of Six Years.
With over 80 million books in print worldwide, Harlan Coben is the #1 New York Times author of thirty five novels including WIN, THE BOY FROM THE WOODS, RUN AWAY, FOOL ME ONCE, TELL NO ONE and the renowned Myron Bolitar series. His books are published in 46 languages around the globe.
Harlan is the creator and executive producer of several Netflix television dramas including FOOL ME ONCE, STAY CLOSE, THE STRANGER, SAFE, THE FIVE, THE INNOCENT and THE WOODS. He is also the creator and executive producer of the Prime Video series Harlan Coben’s SHELTER, based on his young adult books featuring Mickey Bolitar. Harlan was the showrunner and executive producer for two French TV mini-series, UNE CHANCE DE TROP (NO SECOND CHANCE) and JUST UN REGARD (JUST ONE LOOK). KEINE ZWEIT CHANCE, also based on Harlan’s novel, aired in Germany on Sat1.
Harlan’s novel TELL NO ONE (NE LE DIS A PERSONNE) was turned into the renowned French film, directed by Guillaume Canet and starring Francois Cluzet. The movie was the top box office foreign-language film of the year in the USA, won the Lumiere (French Golden Globe) for best picture and was nominated for nine Cesars (French Oscar) and won four, including best actor, best director and best music.
Winner of the Edgar Award, Shamus Award and Anthony Award – the first author to win all three – international bestselling author Harlan Coben’s critically-acclaimed novels have been called “ingenious” (New York Times), “poignant and insightful” (Los Angeles Times), “consistently entertaining” (Houston Chronicle), “superb” (Chicago Tribune) and “must reading” (Philadelphia Inquirer).
In his first books, Coben immersed himself in the exploits of sports agent Myron Bolitar. Critics loved the series, saying, “You race to turn pages…both suspenseful and often surprisingly funny” (People). After seven books Coben wanted to try something different. “I came up with a great idea that simply would not work for Myron,” says Coben. The result was the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller TELL NO ONE, which became the most decorated thriller of the year. Two books later, Bookspan, recognizing Coben’s broad international appeal, named NO SECOND CHANCE its first ever International Book of the Month in 2003 – the Main Selection in 15 different countries.
Harlan was the first writer in more than a decade to be invited to write fiction for the NEW YORK TIMES op-ed page. His Father’s Day short story, THE KEY TO MY FATHER, appeared June 15, 2003. His essays and columns have appeared in many top publications including the New York Times, Parade Magazine and Bloomberg Views.
Harlan has received an eclectic variety of honors from all over the world. In Paris, he was awarded the prestigious Vermeil Medal of Honor for contributions to culture and society by the Mayor of Paris. He has won the El Premio del Novela Negra RBA in Spain, the Grand Prix de Lectrices in France, and the CWA/ITV3 Bestseller Dagger for favorite crime novelist in England. On the other end of the spectrum, Little League Baseball inducted Harlan into their Hall of Excellence in 2013, and Harlan is also a member of the New England Basketball Hall of Fame from his playing days at Amherst College.
Harlan was born in Newark, New Jersey. He still lives in New Jersey with his wife, Anne Armstrong-Coben MD, a pediatrician, and their four children.
When’s the next book coming out?
NOBODY’S FOOL will be out in March 2025 and is now available for pre-order in the US and UK.
THINK TWICE — was released on May 14, 2024
I WILL FIND YOU – is out in paperback.
THE MATCH is out in trade paperback now, with the mass market coming out on July 9, 2024
WIN – March 16th 2021
THE BOY FROM THE WOODS is available in paperback
RUN AWAY is available in paperback
Magical Fantastical Fridge
Harlan’s children’s book ages 4 – 8, is available now
Click here to order.
SHELTER, SECONDS AWAY and FOUND the young adult series featuring Mickey Bolitar are available in paperback. The first trilogy is now complete. There may be more in the series but at present there are no plans for another. Myron Bolitar does appear in these
For a list of all the novels, click here.
What is the order of the Myron Bolitar novels?
DEAL BREAKER, DROP SHOT, FADE AWAY, BACK SPIN, ONE FALSE MOVE, THE FINAL DETAIL, DARKEST FEAR, PROMISE ME, LONG LOST, LIVE WIRE, HOME and the soon to be released THINK TWICE. Myron also appears in the young adult novels SHELTER and SECONDS AWAY and FOUND.
You can get an easy-to-carry print-out of these lists here.
Will you write another Myron Bolitar novel?
Yes! THINK TWICE, the 12th Myron Bolitar book will be released on May 14, 2024. And for those who missed it, Myron also appeared in the young adult novels SHELTER, SECONDS AWAY and FOUND.
I know you’re going to continue writing books for adults, but I’d like more information on the Mickey Bolitar Young Adult series. Where can I find it?
The website MickeyBolitar.com is specifically for the young adult readers and awfully cool. Visit! I’ve really enjoyed the reaction, especially the parents who are sharing the reading experience with their teen. It does a heart good.
Where and when were you born?
January 4, 1962 in Newark, New Jersey. Yes, that’s the same town where Myron Bolitar and Will Klein were born and raised. I still live in New Jersey.
Where did you go to school?
Livingston High School class of 80, Amherst College class of 1984.
Are the books available in e-book, big print or audio formats?
Yes, all the books are available in a wide-range of formats, including Kindle, Nook, iBook, Kobo, abridged and unabridged audio — almost every format available.
Are any of the characters based on real people in your life?
Not really, no. Win is loosely based on my college roommate, though in real life, he is less, er, psychotic than his fictional counterpart.
Where do you get your ideas?
It’s a corny cliché, but anything can stimulate an idea. The hard part is, recognizing which ideas will work and developing that idea into a workable story. An idea is not a plot. An idea is not a novel. Turning it into a story… that’s where the real work comes in.
What about the books PLAY DEAD and MIRACLE CURE? Did you write those?
Yes, in my youth — my early to mid-twenties — I wrote PLAY DEAD, a novel of romantic suspense, I guess, and MIRACLE CURE, which is more a medical thriller. They were out of print for many years, but both have recently be re-released and should be easy to find.
Any word on movies or TV shows?
The British crime drama, Harlan Coben’s THE FIVE, a ten episode series, is now available on Netflix. The French TV series NO SECOND CHANCE, which aired on TF1, will soon be on Netflix with English subtitles. TELL NO ONE, the hit French film, is now readily available with subtitles on DVD, Blu-Ray, Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Will you come to talk at our school, library, conference, etc?
Because of time constraints, family obligations and workloads, the number of appearances I do is limited. If you wish to make a request, you can send it here: jayme.boucher@hbgusa.com
Our book club is reading one of your books. Any suggested questions?
Actually, here is one where I’d love your help. If someone has some helpful questions, I’d be happy to post them here. I can tell you that the themes I love best involve family – the ties and bonds we all know. I enjoy stories where the past reverberates and sends shock waves to the present. I enjoy novels about old secrets and missing people who may still be alive, about loss, about redemption. That should get your started!
Do you have a favorite book of the ones you’ve written?
I’m going to trot out another cliché. The books are like my children. It’s hard and probably wrong to pick favorites.
Do you outline? Do you know the ending before you begin?
I don’t outline. I usually know the ending before I start. I know very little about what happens in between. It’s like driving from New Jersey to California. I may go Route 80, I may go via the Straits of Magellan or stopover in Tokyo… but I’ll end up in California.
Do you read every email yourself?
If the content is appropriate, yup, I read them all. Unfortunately I do not have the time to reply. I hope you understand.
How do I get published?
My advice would be to NOT try to market or sell your novel until it is done. I mean, completely done, done done, fully-finished and ready to go, and a few other redundant phrases like that. Sorry, for obvious reasons, I can’t read manuscripts or recommend an agent. I do suggest that you find an agent. There are many sources for that (the Writer’s Market is one). Then write the agents a fabulous one-page query letter that reads like the greatest flap copy in history. Make them hunger for more.
What is Yoo Hoo?
This link will explain all: https://www.yoo-hoo.com
Have you written any of the following: LEFT FOR DEAD, BOLITAR’S GAME or CRIMEZONE?
NO SECOND CHANCE was originally called LEFT FOR DEAD and some web sites and misprints still list it that way. Please ignore.
BOLITAR’S GAME is a book club ominibus — that is, it contains three Myron titles, not a new book. For details, check out the Mystery Guild’s web site.
CRIMEZONE is simply a magazine interview that is listed on certain sites as a collaboration or story. It is not.
In GONE FOR GOOD, I don’t get the epilogue/last page. How about a hint.
Re-read the first two or three pages of Chapter 52. In the US editions, pages 287-8 (hardcover) or pages 352-354 (paperback).
Is there or will there be a Myron book called The Rise and Fall of Super D?
No, “The Rise and Fall of Super D” was a short story. What you read is all there. You can find it in the USA in hardcover editions of THE INNOCENT. Not sure where it is published in other countries.
How can I get a signed copy of your book?
You can order signed copies of my books from Words Bookstore in Maplewood NJ
Click here to visit their website.
I’m interested in the character-naming charitable donation program. Where can I get more information?
For more information write to charity@harlancoben.com.
Harlan Coben
USA flag (b.1962)
Winner of the Edgar Award, Shamus Award and Anthony Award - the first author to win all three -- New York Times bestseller Harlan Coben's critically-acclaimed novels have been called "poignant and insightful" (Los Angeles Times), "consistently entertaining" (Houston Chronicle), "superb" (Chicago Tribune) and "must reading" (Philadelphia Inquirer).
Awards: Barry (1998), Shamus (1997), Edgar (1997), Anthony (1996) see all
Genres: Mystery, Young Adult Fiction, Children's Fiction
New and upcoming books
March 2025
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Nobody's Fool
(Detective Kierce, book 2)October 2025
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Reese Witherspoon Harlan Coben Novel
Series
Myron Bolitar
1. Deal Breaker (1995)
2. Drop Shot (1996)
3. Fade Away (1996)
4. Back Spin (1997)
5. One False Move (1998)
6. The Final Detail (1999)
7. Darkest Fear (2000)
8. Promise Me (2006)
9. Long Lost (2009)
10. Live Wire (2011)
11. Home (2016)
12. Think Twice (2024)
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Mickey Bolitar
1. Shelter (2011)
2. Seconds Away (2012)
3. Found (2014)
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Detective Kierce
1. Fool Me Once (2015)
2. Nobody's Fool (2025)
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Wilde
1. The Boy from the Woods (2020)
2. The Match (2022)
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Windsor Horne Lockwood III
1. Win (2021)
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Novels
Play Dead (1990)
Miracle Cure (1991)
Tell No One (2001)
Gone For Good (2002)
No Second Chance (2003)
Just One Look (2004)
The Innocent (2005)
The Woods (2007)
Hold Tight (2008)
Caught (2010)
Stay Close (2012)
Six Years (2013)
Missing You (2014)
The Stranger (2015)
Don't Let Go (2017)
Run Away (2019)
I Will Find You (2023)
Reese Witherspoon Harlan Coben Novel (2025) (with Reese Witherspoon)
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Anthologies edited
Birds of Prey (2022) (with C J Box)
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Series contributed to
Mystery Writers of America Presents
Death Do Us Part (2006)
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Best American Mystery Stories
The Best American Mystery Stories 2011 (2011) (with Otto Penzler)
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Picture Books hide
The Magical Fantastical Fridge (2016)
aka Walden and the Magic Refrigerator
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Omnibus editions hide
Two Great Novels (2004)
Three Great Novels 2 (2004)
Three Great Novels 3 (2005)
Tell No One / Gone for Good (2008)
Just One Look / Innocent / Promise Me (2008)
Harlan Coben 3 Novel Collection (2011)
Harlan Coben
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Harlan Coben
Born c. 1962 (age 62–63)[1]
Newark, New Jersey, U.S.
Occupation Author
Nationality American
Alma mater Amherst College
Period 1990–present
Genre Mystery, thriller
Notable works Myron Bolitar series of novels
Notable awards Anthony Award (1996),
Edgar Award and Shamus Award (1997)
Spouse Anne Helen Armstrong
Children 4
Website
harlancoben.com
Harlan Coben (born c. 1962) is an American writer of mystery novels and thrillers. The plots of his novels often involve the resurfacing of unresolved or misinterpreted events in the past, murders, or fatal accidents and have multiple twists. Twelve of his novels have been adapted for film and television.
Coben has won an Edgar Award, a Shamus Award, and an Anthony Award—the first author to receive all three.[2][3] His books have been translated into 43 languages and sold over 60 million copies.[4]
Early life and education
Coben was born into a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, and was raised in Livingston,[5] where he graduated from Livingston High School, with his childhood friend, future governor Chris Christie.[6]
He studied political science at Amherst College, where he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity, along with Dan Brown.[7][8] Coben was in his senior year at college when he realized he wanted to write.[9]
Career
After graduating in 1984, Coben worked in the travel industry, in a company owned by his grandfather.[7][9] It was during that time when he wrote his first book, romantic suspense thriller Play Dead, which was accepted for publication when he was 26 and released in 1990.[9] It was followed by Miracle Cure in 1991. He then began writing a series of thrillers featuring a former basketball player turned sports agent, Myron Bolitar, who often finds himself investigating murders involving his clients.
Tell No One, his first stand-alone thriller since the creation of the Myron Bolitar series in 1995, was published in 2001. A French-language film adaptation based on the book was released in 2006.[10] Coben followed Tell No One with nine more stand-alone novels. His novel Hold Tight, published on April 15, 2008, was his first book to debut at number 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list.[11]
In 2003, Coben published a short story about his father, who had died of a heart attack at the age of 59 in 1988.[4][12] Entitled "The Key to My Father," the story was published in The New York Times on Father's Day, June 15, 2003.[13] Besides The New York Times, his essays and columns have appeared in Parade magazine and Bloomberg Views.[14]
Bibliography
Series Year Title
Myron Bolitar 1995 Deal Breaker
1996 Drop Shot
Fade Away
1997 Back Spin
1998 One False Move
1999 The Final Detail
2000 Darkest Fear
2006 Promise Me
2009 Long Lost
2011 Live Wire
2016 Home
2024 Think Twice[15]
Mickey Bolitar
(1st Myron Bolitar spin-off series) 2011 Shelter
2012 Seconds Away
2014 Found
Wilde 2020 The Boy from the Woods
2022 The Match
Windsor Horne Lockwood III
(2nd Myron Bolitar spin-off series) 2021 Win
Standalone novels 1990 Play Dead
1991 Miracle Cure
2001 Tell No One
2002 Gone for Good
2003 No Second Chance
2004 Just One Look
2005 The Innocent
2007 The Woods
2008 Hold Tight
2010 Caught
2012 Stay Close
2013 Six Years
2014 Missing You
2015 The Stranger
2016 The Magical Fantastical Fridge
Fool Me Once
2017 Don't Let Go
2019 Run Away
2023 I Will Find You
Awards
Coben won the 1996 Anthony Award in the category "Best Paperback Original", for Deal Breaker, the first volume of the Myron Bolitar series; it was also nominated for an Edgar Award in the same category.[16][17] Fade Away won the 1997 Shamus Award and the Edgar Award for "Best Paperback Original",[17][18] was nominated for the Anthony Award and the Barry Award in the same category,[16][19] and was nominated for a Dilys Award.[20] The following Myron Bolitar novel, Back Spin, won the 1998 Barry Award and was nominated for the Dilys Award and the Shamus Award.[18][19][20] In 2002, Tell No One was nominated for the Anthony Award, the Macavity Award, the Edgar Award and the Barry Award.[16][19][21][22] In 2010, Live Wire won the crime fiction award, the RBA Prize for Crime Writing, worth €125,000.[23]
In 2023, the Japanese edition of Win, translated by Toshiki Taguchi, was nominated for the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Mystery Fiction in Translation.[24][25]
Adaptations
Coben's first book to be adapted for the screen was Tell No One. Director Guillaume Canet made a French-language film, based on the book, titled Ne le dis à personne, in 2006.[10]
Coben's 2003 book No Second Chance became the basis for the 2015 French miniseries of the same name. Two years later the same happened to Just One Look.
Coben is the creator of the British crime drama television show The Five, which first aired in April 2016 on the Sky 1 channel in the United Kingdom.[26][27][28] Coben also created the French-British crime drama television show Safe, which premiered on Netflix in 190 countries on May 10, 2018.[29][30]
Films and TV series
TV contracts
In 2022, Amazon Studios announced plans to produce a series based on the first Mickey Bolitar novel, Shelter.[31] Jaden Michael stars as Mickey, alongside Constance Zimmer, Adrian Greensmith, Abby Corrigan, and Sage Linder.[32][33][34] The series, Harlan Coben's Shelter, was released on August 18, 2023.[35]
In August 2018, Coben signed a multi-million-dollar, 5-year contract with Netflix. Under the deal, 14 of his novels would be developed into series or films, with him serving as executive producer on all of them.[36] The first one was The Stranger which premiered in January 2020.[37] In October 2022, it was announced that Netflix had extended the deal for another 4 years, with the Myron Bolitar series now also available for adaptation but has been canceled following the end of the first season.[38] On February 20, 2023, Fool Me Once was announced as an upcoming adaptation in production for Netflix.[39]
List of Netflix Original Series Under the Deal
No. Title (English & LOTE) Country of origin Language Episodes Release date Ref
# Safe (English: Safe) United Kingdom English 8 May 10, 2018
1 The Stranger (English: The Stranger) United Kingdom English 8 January 30, 2020
2 The Woods (Polish: W głębi lasu) Poland Polish 6 June 12, 2020
3 The Innocent (Spanish: El inocente) Spain Spanish 8 April 30, 2021 [40]
4 Gone for Good (French: Disparu à jamais) France French 5 August 13, 2021
5 Stay Close (English: Stay Close) United Kingdom English 8 December 31, 2021 [41]
6 Hold Tight (Polish: Zachowaj spokój) Poland Polish 6 April 22, 2022 [42]
7 Fool Me Once (English: Fool Me Once) United Kingdom English 8 January 1, 2024 [43]
8 Missing You (English: Missing You) United Kingdom English 5 January 1, 2025 [44]
9 Caught (Spanish: Atrapados) Argentina Spanish 6 [45]
10 I Will Find You (English: I Will Find You) United States English 8 [46]
11 Run Away (English: Run Away) United Kingdom English [44]
Personal life
Coben lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey, with his wife Anne Armstrong-Coben, a pediatrician, and their four children.[14][4
13 May 22
Interview: Harlan Coben on The Match, Netflix, Springsteen, and The Art of the Thriller
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Interview: Harlan Coben on The Match, Netflix, Springsteen, and The Art of the Thriller
Claudio Marinesco
Pat Carty
Pat Carty
With somewhere north of 75 million books in print – in 45 languages – Harlan Coben is one of the masters of the mystery novel, and a high-profile deal with Netflix has spread his thrilling tales further still. “I want to be suspenseful; I want to keep you up all night,” he tells Pat Carty.
Harlan Coben is no stranger to a winning character. Just take basketball player, turned sports agent, turned problem solver, Myron Bolitar, and his pal Windsor Horne Lockwood III (or just Win), an arse-kicking billionaire who “helps out” law enforcement. Win is a sort of Bruce Wayne figure, if Wayne spent his downtime meditating while watching his own sex tapes. We can now add Wilde, the star of Coben’s latest, The Match, to that number. He was found living in the woods as a young boy, never claimed, and grew up to combine a soldier’s training with those hard-earned skills he picked up in the forest. I put it to Coben that coming up with a pitch like that must have been a ‘Eureka!’, punch-the-air moment?
“Yes, and no!” replies the author with a grin. “You’re always doubting yourself and second guessing, especially with a new character that you’re going to write for more than one book. I knew when I wrote the first one that I was not going to give his origin story, so there would be at least two. I was taking a hike in the woods, which I’m not a big fan of – here’s a tree, here’s another tree, it’s hot and it’s sweaty. I saw a little five-year-old boy walking on a parallel path. What if that kid came out of the woods right now and said he always lived here, always fended for himself, and didn’t remember his parents? And now, 30 years later, as The Match opens, he’s across the street from his biological father.”
Though he says he always planned at least two books, he did wrap things up fairly neatly at the end of the first Wilde adventure, 2020’s The Boy From The Woods. Were bets being hedged in case nobody bought it? Coben has a good laugh at the frankly ridiculous notion that a book with his name on the front of it wouldn’t sell.
“I think every book should stand on its own,” he reasonably asserts. “Some people are very anal and want to read a series in order, and there is a joy to that. The first book or two of the Myron Bolitar series are, however, a little creaky, so I always tell people to start with the third one. I try to make every novel and every TV series stand on its own. When I do a series with Netflix, I always make sure that the ending is finished. Now, maybe I’ll do a season two sometime, but not because I gave you a cliffhanger at the end of season one. I don’t think that’s really fair.”
There is exposition in The Match, so a reader can indeed enjoy it as a standalone novel without having to read the first one. Is it tricky to get the balance right when it comes to this sort of filling in?
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“You have to give the same amount of backstory you would probably be giving even if they hadn’t read it before,” says Coben. “Now to some people, that may be a little bit repetitive, but probably most people kind of enjoy hearing a paragraph or two about something they already know. And most of them need refreshers, because it’s been over a year since they read the book anyway!”
But it’s not the Batman scenario where – nearly – every film insists on showing his parents being shot?
“It’s something that influences that character and inspires them, but we also enjoy seeing Batman’s parents die, don’t we? When I was a kid, Batman was the original jokey Adam West TV show, so it wasn’t until I dove into the comics that I realised his parents died. The TV show never mentioned it, so it all depends on how you want to tell the story.”
The Hero
Coben alluded to the Myron Bolitar series – is the plan to build a similar universe around Wilde?
“I never really know,” he says. “I knew when I wrote Myron, it was gonna be an extended series. What happens now is I think of an idea and then I ask who’s going to tell the story. Sometimes the answer is Myron, sometimes the answer is Win, sometimes the answer is Wilde. For the most part, the answer is somebody I haven’t yet met. The next book I’m going to write after The Match is a standalone that has none of these characters in it. Will the next book after that have them? I won’t know until I think of what that story is going to be. I never want to force it, to do it just to please the reader, or to make a balloon mortgage payment. I don’t do it for the wrong reasons.”
There must be some brand recognition though. Not just with the Coben name, but when potential readers hear that a favourite character has returned. He doesn’t see it that way.
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“That’s not important at all,” he insists. “My hope is there’s a built-in audience for my name, not the character name, because there may be those who missed The Boy From The Woods who are going to feel like they maybe shouldn’t read The Match. And what’s interesting is how many people have read it and didn’t realise there was a first book. I don’t really write a novel with the idea of how it’s going to be marketed, other than I want to be suspenseful. I want to keep you up all night. I want you to take The Match to bed at 10 o’clock at night and think you’re only going to read for 15 minutes and next thing you know, it’s four in the morning.”
Alongside the suspense, there are some pot-shots at what some might call societal ills, such as the power of social media and reality television.
“It’s really great drama, and I always do something that reflects reality,” is how Coben sees it. “Everything has to be slave to the story, and I think these issues enhance the story. Besides the idea of a DNA website, which are also new in today’s society, I was watching some of these dating reality shows with my kids and saw how manipulative they are. I wanted to write about how these people all of a sudden get huge fame for really very little and how that’s going to mess up their lives. I wanted to write about influencers. I wanted to write about online trolling and bullying, how cruel people are."
“Every day I look at Twitter, see something cruel, and wonder what went wrong with this guy’s life that he’s reduced to tweeting out something mean about a woman’s weight, or whatever it is. These things fascinate me so, in the case of The Match, all of them figured into this story when one of the people that Wilde is related to goes missing, and he’s a reality star on a Bachelor-type TV show. I don’t explore that to say, ‘Look how smart I am!’, I explore it because this is what’s going on in the world today, and it’s dramatic and suspenseful to do it.”
Ever since his first attempts – “I wrote two or three novels that will hopefully never see the light of day, unless my kids find them when I’m gone” – Coben has kept up a prodigious work rate. Is he like a comedian coming up with the punchline first and then constructing the joke around it, or does he take a different approach?
“I know the beginning and the end and then it’s a journey, but that journey will never go as I planned. I’m going to take the direct route from New Jersey to LA but I’ll stop in Tokyo, or go via the Suez Canal, and that’s part of the joy of writing. I don’t work backwards, but I know the destination. E.L. Doctorow said writing is like driving in the fog with your headlights on – you can only see a little bit ahead of you, but you can make the whole journey that way. The thing I would add is that I know where the journey’s going to end, and that helps me.”
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The Producer
Even if you haven’t read one of Coben’s books, chances are you’ll have streamed one of his TV shows. He signed a big-money deal with Netflix in 2018 to develop several of his novels for the service.
“I’d done shows in France, for TF1, and The Five for Sky and, at the time, Netflix were looking to do more international stuff,” he explains. “My books actually sell better in other countries, overall, than they do in the US, so they were looking to do one in France and in England and I think it was them – maybe it was me – who came up with the idea of doing an overall deal. I was open to it, I’m not a writer who thinks adaptations should be slavishly devoted to the texts, so I was great with moving the stories to Northern England or Barcelona or Warsaw, or wherever else. I think it enriches the story, and I found it creatively compelling.”
Coben is frequently listed as ‘Executive Producer’, a role that is unclear to some people, including me.
“It depends on the show. I don’t actually write the episodes, but I’ll rewrite them, I’ll confer a lot. I’ll speak to actors like James Nesbitt and Eddie Izzard before they take the role, I’m involved with the whole process, literally everything.”
The question then is, does he prefer the control of writing alone or the collaboration of working with a team?
“What I’ve found is that they have been feeding off each other,” he reckons. “I’ve spent most of my life alone in a room. I’m a socially adept introvert, but I’m an introvert, so on the TV stuff I am super willing to collaborate because I’m such a dictator with my books. That’s part of the joy for me. When I have a book do really well, it’s like winning Wimbledon; you stand on your own to pick up that trophy. With the TV show, it’s more like I’m the captain of a World Cup winning team celebrating together, which is such fun. I don’t care who scores the goals, I just want to win. I’m lucky to have experienced both and I love them both. For me, Netflix has been a wonderful creative partner.”
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The Boss
I notice that Coben’s t-shirt says Asbury Park. He corrects me by pointing out that it actually says Asbury Park Brewery, which is, of course, even better. This prompts me to enquire if that other New Jersey million-seller, Mr Bruce Springsteen, is an influence on his work.
“Everybody’s influenced, in some way or another,” he says. “I’m influenced by Ed Hopper’s painting, by Hitchcock’s movies. Some writers still pretend that they’re only influenced by other writers, but you should be influenced by everything in culture, including movies and TV. Everything in life should be something of an influence. When I finish a book, I’m empty. I’m a boxer who’s gone 12 rounds, I can’t even lift my arms anymore. When I finish a book, I need to replenish. I might go to the Museum of Modern Art and just walk around and look at art for a while. I walk around New York City, things to fill you up anew so you can then start writing again.”
“But Springsteen? Sure!” Coben’s enthusiasm is evident. “I wrote an essay a number of years ago for a book on the top albums of all time [VH1: 100 Greatest Albums]. Born To Run was the one they asked me to write about. One of my arguments is it’s really one of the great short story collections of all time. Just the line, ‘Screen door slams, Mary’s dress waves’, that could be a prompt for a whole bunch of wonderful short stories. Listen to ‘Meeting Across The River’. You hear he and Eddie are going to try to make things right, but you know they’re going to end up on the losing side of life.”
I always thought Western Stars was a sort of continuation from Born To Run. We’re checking back in on some of the same characters decades later to see how life treated them.
“Western Stars is Springsteen’s most under-rated album,” Coben nods. “It’s utterly fantastic. It’s definitely his best, in my view, since The Rising. It’s just an incredible album. What you should do is sit with the lyrics in front of you, old school. Remember when we used to, in the old days, get a vinyl album? We would look at it and follow the stories. The song ‘Western Stars’, especially, and ‘Moonlight Motel’ has an incredible, heartbreaking story at the end. When he lifts that bottle up to his mouth? It’s just an incredible album.”
Obviously a man of good taste, Coben has said elsewhere that reading William Goldman’s 1974 edge-of-the-seat page-turner Marathon Man as a youngster was what set him off.
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“That was one of the first adult thrillers I remember, by the great William Goldman, who became a friend later in life. I got that book from my Dad when I was, I think, 14 or 15. I remember reading it and thinking, ‘You could put a gun to my head but I’m not putting this book down’. Even though at the time I don’t think I knew I wanted to be a writer, subconsciously, I thought, ‘How cool would it be to give other people this feeling?’ It’s something I keep in mind every day.”
• The Match is published by Century/Penguin Random House, and is reviewed here by Pat Carty.
Book Interview: Harlan Coben on 'the novel of immersion'
"Every book feels like it’s going to be impossible to write. Every book feels like I’ll never do it again. When I finish, there’s all sorts of doubts and insecurities. This one is no different."
Book Interview: Harlan Coben on 'the novel of immersion'
Author Harlan Coben. Picture: Claudio Marinesco/PA
Sat, 22 Apr, 2023 - 21:00
Ed Power
I Will Find You
Harlan Coben
Century, €13.99
If there is a fate worse than death, it is not knowing what happened to a loved one. So believes bestselling thriller writer Harlan Coben. That’s why in his whodunnits the bodies tend to remain out of sight, their whereabouts undetermined.
“I’m big on missing people in general,” he says from a hotel room in Dublin. “Most of my books are disappearances. I find disappearances more interesting. Agatha Christie had murders. I like disappearances. There’s always hope with a disappearance, isn’t there?”
Coben returns to that theme with his latest novel, I Will Find You. Everyday dad David has been imprisoned for the murder five years previously of his toddler son. But when his sister-in-law brings photographs suggesting the child might be alive he does everything in his power — including breaking free of jail and evading the FBI — to uncover the truth.
“The book starts at the lowest point possible. But he could still have redemption. Proving himself innocent wouldn't give him redemption because his child would still be dead. So the idea that he could have full redemption [with the child still alive] was what drove me to see what we could do with the story.”
Coben is in Dublin on a brief stop-off on a book tour that will see him hopscotch Ireland and Europe. He’s fighting jet lag but naturally voluble. He also has the under-stated confidence that comes with selling 75m novels and then successfully branching into TV, with hit adaptations of books such as The Stranger, Safe, and Stay Close.
“There’s that quote from a Dan Fogelberg song where he says the audience is heavenly but the traveling is hell. I missed the people. It’s not hard meeting people who tell you they like your book. But the travelling is hard work. I flew in this morning from Boston. Tomorrow I leave for Manchester. The next day, London. That gets tiring.”
Learn more
Coben didn’t sell tens of millions of novels by accident. The trick he pulls off is to write intricate, pacy novels that suck you in. There are books that feel like the literary equivalent of eating your vegetables. Then there are those books that you don’t read so much as inhale. That is the category to which Coben belongs.
“I’m the guy who’s writing what I call the novel of immersion. You take it on vacation and you’d rather stay in your hotel room and finish it. Or you started tonight at 11 o’clock. The next you know, it’s four in the morning and you’re cursing me. But kind of happy. With that kind of novel — I love the feeling. You’re just so lost in a book the rest of the world disappears. That’s what I aim to write.”
I Will Find You by Harlan Coben
I Will Find You by Harlan Coben
He wrote I Will Find You in the unsteady months after the end of the pandemic. It’s his 50th novel — not that it ever gets any more straightforward.
“It’s certainly not easy. Every book feels like it’s going to be impossible to write. Every book feels like I’ll never do it again. When I finish, there’s all sorts of doubts and insecurities. This one is no different. It’s not easy. And you’re trying to make it so that the seams don’t show. That it doesn’t seem hard. That’s part of the sleight of hand, if you will.”
Coben has taken his success as a writer and translated it to the screen. He’s worked with Sky, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. In the case of Netflix, this has led to binging hits such as The Stranger, Safe, and The Innocent. One surprise is that these shows often strip away the “American” quality of his novels — Netflix's Safe was set in Cheshire, The Woods in Poland. It goes to show that a good story is a good story regardless of the backdrop.
“The TV shows have been an interesting hybrid where I can take what’s perceived as an American story and place is elsewhere. Human beings are not that different. Cultures are different. But we all have the same wants and hopes and dreams. I tell my children that. How I develop my characters is that every person you meet has hopes and dreams. It’s a good way of feeling empathy — of creating characters.”
He’s relaxed about working on TV. As an author, he gets to be a despot every time he sits down in front of a blank page. Surrendering some of that control when collaborating on a show is an enjoyable novelty.
“I have the books where I get to be a complete and utter dictator. I’m everything: the writer, producer, director, key-grip — whatever that is. I get through all that and then I’m very collaborative as a TV guy. I like to hear from my cast and crew. I'm very open to making changes.I want the best show I can make. The comparison I like is that when you’re writing a book, it’s like you want to win Wimbledon or the Masters. When you’re on a TV show you’re like a captain at the World Cup. You don’t care who scores as long as the team wins. That’s how it works.”
Cohen was born in Newark, a hardscrabble city in New Jersey close to Manhattan. He was raised in the well-to-do town of Livingstone where, at school, he was a classmate of future New Jersey governor, Chris Christie. He worked after graduation as a tour guide in Spain (for a company owned by his grandfather) which is when he wrote his debut novel, Play Dead in 1990.
His New Jersey roots keep him grounded he feels. He is an underdog from a state of underdogs. “New Jersey is this very dense state jammed between New York and Philadelphia. With a little bit of a chip on its shoulder. A little bit of a complex. It’s dense and diverse. I think there is something to that.”
Coben is part of an exclusive club of bestselling thriller writers. These are authors who shift paperbacks by the tonne and whose names are such a brand that they dwarf their book titles. He doesn’t feel any sense of competition with other writers, however, If anything the feeling is one of comradeship.
“I don’t know if this is true for other writers but, with the crime thriller gals and guys, I consider them friends. The attitude I have is that no one has to fail so I can succeed. In our case, the boat rises and falls together. If you read a Lee Child book and you really like it, it’s going to make you want to read more. It’s going to help. There are very few people who have our job and understand what we do. These are people I consider good friends.”
Harlan Coben Talks Loss, Redemption and the Power of a Good Twist
Contributor: Millie Naylor Hast
Millie Naylor Hast
March 9, 2023
7 min read
I Will Find You by Harlan Coben
David Burroughs has it all — a loving wife, an adored son — until he discovers Matthew brutally murdered in his bed and is convicted in his killing. His wife divorces him, and he goes to prison for life. He hardly cares whether he lives or dies because his family is gone.
That is, until one day five years later, his ex-sister-in-law Rachel becomes his first visitor in prison and shows him a recent photograph she’s found of Matthew at an amusement park. David can hardly believe his eyes.
He plans a harrowing escape from prison to do what he must — find his son, clear his name and find out what really happened at his home on that devastating night.
Harlan Coben’s 36th thriller, I Will Find You (Grand Central Publishing), probes the destructive power of secrets and the enduring strength of family bonds. With 80 million books — yes, you read that right — in print worldwide, including the breathtaking Myron Bolitar series, Coben is one of the most successful, prolific and admired thriller writers at work today. In addition to his novels, he has seven original drama series currently streaming on Netflix, three more in active development and others, including I Will Find You, in the planning stages.
Even with all these demands, Coben graciously took some time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions for The Big Thrill about his life, his career and his latest thriller.
Q&A With Harlan Coben
Q: You grew up in Livingston, New Jersey, and went to school with former Governor Chris Christie, before attending Amherst College. How did your early life shape you?
A: When I grew up in what appeared to be a normal, sleepy middle-class American suburb, there were two weird rumors about my hometown. One was that behind Riker Hill Elementary School, beyond the No Trespassing signs and barbed-wire fence, there was a secret missile base with nuclear capabilities. The other rumor was that on the largest estate in the town, past the stone gates, lived a legendary mob boss who got rid of bodies in a furnace on his property.
When I got older, I learned that both rumors were true. So maybe there’s something in that — the idea that secrets are hidden in plain sight, that nothing is exactly as it seems.
Q: Your novels are consistent New York Times #1 bestsellers, you have won the Edgar, the Macavity and the Shamus Awards, as well as other awards, and you have multi-year, multimillion-dollar TV series deals with Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services. How in the world do you manage it all, as well as continuing to write amazing stories? When you were first starting out, what did you envision for your career? Did you ever imagine reaching this level of success? What does it feel like?
A: I never imagined I would reach this level. Not even close. It’s a dream come true. Simple as that. My ambitions have always been incremental, and I recommend that. For example:
“Wouldn’t it be great if I could have one novel published? Just one.”
Then: “Well, two. Wouldn’t that be great? Just to show it wasn’t a fluke.”
Then: “Okay, what if I could just scratch out a living as a writer?”
Then: “Wouldn’t it be great to one day skim the bottom of the New York Times bestseller list?”
Then: “Wouldn’t it be great if I could maybe just once hit number one … ?”
Like that. It’s been fantastic. I’m very lucky.
Q: Clearly, your stories strike a chord with readers. What do you think is the key to their enduring popularity the world over?
A: I’m not the one to answer this. I try to write thrillers you can’t put down, that you become completely immersed in. I think that’s a combination of stirring the pulse, stirring the brain — and mostly, stirring the heart. If you don’t care about the characters, you won’t care about the twists.
Q: Themes of loss, redemption and a missing person who may still be alive appear in some of your other books and are central to I Will Find You. What is it about these themes that invites you to explore them in various ways?
A: I think they are universal. We all experience them. We all get it. They also fascinate me.
Q: What sparked the idea for I Will Find You?
A: Here’s a first: I don’t remember! I usually can pinpoint how or when I came up with an idea. I don’t remember for I Will Find You. I had the initial idea a long time ago, but it never rose to the front of my subconscious enough to want to write an entire novel about it. Finally it did. But I don’t remember where or how I planted that first seed. Sorry!
Q: It has been said that you write “thrillers with heart.” How does heart play a role in I Will Find You?
A: You are a father serving a life sentence for murdering your own son. Now you find out that your son may still be alive. If that doesn’t get the heart pumping, I’m in trouble.
Q: David Burroughs isn’t exactly the picture-perfect vision of a hero. He’s a convict, who like many prisoners, believes he has been wrongfully convicted. He has shunned contact with the outside world and turned away from those who cared about him. That is, until his former sister-in-law Rachel visits him with a photograph. How did you create David, with all his contradictions? Did you plan him out ahead of time, or did he manifest himself on the page as you wrote?
A: It’s always a blend of those two. I know some things about a character before I begin, but until I start to write the actual novel, I don’t really know how he will react to what happens. The best part is when a character like David doesn’t respond in a way that would be “easiest” for the plot, when they do the unexpected. That’s when they really come to life for me.
Q: You’re known for the awesome twists you work into your stories. For example, in I Will Find You, the prison warden, Philip Mackenzie does something astonishing. Where on earth did that idea come from? What makes us readers believe it could happen?
A: That’s very kind, so thank you. I could give a cute answer, but I don’t really know. It’s like any skill, I guess — innate yet honed, practiced yet genetic, all that. I become obsessed. I think about it all the time. I’m not saying it’s super arduous or any of that. But I really care about the work. I don’t settle. I don’t ease up. It lives with me all the time.
Q: Tell us about what’s next for you.
A: The new novel I Will Find You comes out in March. We just finished filming here in New Jersey an Amazon Prime TV series called Shelter, based on my young adult series featuring Mickey Bolitar. That’ll be streaming soon.
This story appears through BookTrib’s partnership with the International Thriller Writers. It first appeared in The Big Thrill.
Harlan Coben is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and one of the world’s leading storytellers. His suspense novels are published in forty-six languages and have been number one bestsellers in more than a dozen countries, with eighty million books in print worldwide. His Myron Bolitar series has earned the Edgar, Shamus and Anthony Awards, and several of his books have been developed into Netflix original series, including The Stranger, The Innocent, Gone for Good, The Woods, Stay Close and Hold Tight, as well as the upcoming Amazon Prime series adaptation of Shelter. He lives in New Jersey.
This article is more than 6 months old
Harlan Coben: ‘After I’d signed autographs for fans in Paris, one said: I told you it wasn’t Bruce Willis’
This article is more than 6 months old
The author on cleaning ‘slasher film set’ student rooms, the drudgery of modern travel, and why it’s OK to change your mind
Rosanna Greenstreet
Sat 3 Aug 2024 04.30 EDT
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Born in New Jersey, Harlan Coben, 62, studied political science and worked in the travel industry before publishing his first novel, Play Dead, in 1990. His work has been translated into 46 languages and he has adapted many of his bestsellers for television. Fool Me Once became the sixth most watched show on Netflix, and the TV series of his YA novel Shelter is available on Prime. The latest in his Myron Bolitar series is called Think Twice. He is married with four children and lives in New Jersey.
What is your greatest fear?
I don’t even voice them. Perhaps the books are my outlet here.
What was your most embarrassing moment?
I was followed by a mob of fans when I was doing a photoshoot in Paris. When I signed autographs for them during a break, one remarked: “Who the fuck is Harlan Coben? I told you it wasn’t Bruce Willis.”
What is your most treasured possession?
I don’t want to sound too kumbaya or pretend I don’t enjoy the finer things in life, but nothing comes to mind. If the house was on fire and I could only run out with one possession, I can’t think what it would be.
What would your superpower be?
That thing where you can transport yourself anywhere in a blink of an eye, mostly because I detest the drudgery of modern travel.
What is the worst job you’ve done?
I worked a janitorial job, cleaning university dormitories after students had gone home for the summer. You can’t imagine the condition some of those rooms were in. They could have doubled as sets for a slasher film.
What is your most unappealing habit?
I get distracted to the point of being rude. There is always a little part of me preoccupied with wondering what-if and trying to twist something into a story. It often makes me bad company.
Portrait of Meghan Trainor
Meghan Trainor: ‘I brought my entire family with me on my honeymoon’
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Which book are you ashamed not to have read?
Where to begin? Ulysses, Wuthering Heights, Invisible Man, All the King’s Men. I could go on and on.
What does love feel like?
A white-hot explosion that turns into a comforting warmth.
Which living person do you most despise and why?
The most dangerous man is the one who doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
“In other words.” Man, I need to just say it clearly the first time.
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but if I could go back and fix the mistake, I wouldn’t be here.
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When’s the last time you changed your mind about something significant?
I change my mind a lot. Nothing shows you are more engaged, intelligent, and open-minded than taking in new evidence and altering your opinion. Let’s normalise changing our minds.
What would you like to leave your children?
Nothing. I would rather give it to them now.
How would you like to be remembered?
With a wistful smile.
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
We are too often advised to live life to the fullest. That’s too much pressure. The key is to find joy and poignancy in the quiet and mundane. Life is lived between the so-called big moments.
What happens when we die?
Hamlet via Shakespeare described death as “the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns”. In short, we don’t know, and I am highly suspicious of anyone who tells us otherwise.
Tell us a joke
What did Jay-Z call his wife before they got married? Feyoncé. I’ll show myself out.
Interview
Harlan Coben: ‘I used to write in the back of Ubers’
This article is more than 3 years old
James McMahon
The writer, 59, on working in a disco, being an introvert and growing up Jewish
Sat 8 Jan 2022 09.00 EST
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In college I worked as a tour guide on the Costa del Sol. It was a weird scene. I saw some wild stuff; some violence I’d like to forget. I lived in one hotel room with four or five people for a while. I worked in a discotheque. But it inspired my first attempt at really writing. I needed to get it all down.
I think most writers have impostor syndrome. On the one hand you think, “I suck, I’ve got nothing to say, this isn’t working at all,” and the next moment you have the hubris to say, “I’m going to write 500 pages and people are going to pay me to read it.”
My advice for writers? Just get it out. You can fix bad pages. You can’t fix no pages.
There’s a lot of me in my stories. No writer likes to admit this, but when I started my Myron Bolitar series a lot of it was wish fulfilment. He’s smarter than me, faster, stronger. I played basketball; he was a better player than me. As the series went on, I created a tension between us. His parents are alive. Mine died young. His dream in life is to get married and have kids. I did that. We’re jealous of each other.
I used to write in the back of Ubers. I can’t write in the same place for very long. I basically finished The Stranger over three weeks of Uber rides. Then that stopped working so I tried something else. Planes were it for a while. Not that I was taking planes everywhere, but I was drawn to long flights. Generally speaking, I like being disturbed a bit. It makes me focus harder.
I don’t know any writer who doesn’t like being alone. I’m an introvert. A socially adept one, but an introvert all the same. I can be fine in company, but when I go home I’m exhausted. I need to not see anyone for a while. If you’re a person who constantly wants people around you, writing probably isn’t for you.
Only one of my kids had any interest or talent in writing. That’s Charlotte, she’s a really good scriptwriter. She’s worked with me on my Netflix adaptations. The rest are all science-based, like their mother, a physician. One of my daughters is majoring in computational biology. I don’t even know what that means. My son just got a job in flight control at Nasa. I like bragging about that. I’m really proud.
The importance of my Jewishness changes. I’m secular, but it’s the world I grew up in. It’s in my makeup. I view my Jewishness as cultural. There’s a weird deal with Jews where they will define themselves as Jewish even if they don’t buy a word. You don’t see too many Catholics or Christians or anybody Muslim saying, “Oh, I’m a Catholic, but I don’t buy a word of it!”
I can’t tell you the secret to writing a great mystery other than to say I’m always asking, “What if?” It’s a fair criticism that I twist too much. If you don’t like a twist, I’m really not your guy! But really what I’m trying to do is make every paragraph, every page, every sentence and every word more compelling. How can I make you want to turn the page even more?
This article was amended on 9 January 2022. Coben was referring to his Myron Bolitar series, not his “Harlan Coben” series as stated in an earlier version.
Stay Close is available on Netflix now
The Match
Harlan Coben. Grand Central, $29 (352p)
ISBN 978-1-5387-4828-2
Could Wilde, a 40-something man who was discovered living on his own three decades earlier in the New Jersey woods, finally learn how he came to grow up feral? Bestseller Coben provides some answers in this uneven sequel to 2020's The Boy from the Woods. After years of uncertainty, Wilde submits a DNA sample to a genealogy website, but after he receives a message about a possible second cousin, identified only as PB, Wilde gets distracted and never responds to PB's message. Sometime later, just as Wilde is preparing to return to the U.S. from Costa Rica, a new alert identifies his biological father as Nevada's Daniel Carter. But when Wilde tracks him down, Carter's unsure about more than a one-time meeting. Wilde reaches out to PB hoping to learn more, only to find this potential second blood relative unreachable. His search for PB enmeshes him in the messy world of internet trolls, vigilantes, and reality TV, and lands him as the prime suspect in a murder. Plenty of exciting action makes up only in part for a lack of character depth. Coben has done better. Agent: Lisa Vance, Aaron M. Priest Literary. (Mar.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"The Match." Publishers Weekly, vol. 269, no. 5, 31 Jan. 2022, p. 52. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A693466481/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3d7cefe2. Accessed 2 Mar. 2025.
The Match. By Harlan Coben. Mar. 2022. 352p. Grand Central, $29 (9781538748282); e-book, $14.99 (9781538748336).
"Be careful what you search for" could be the theme of Coben's sequel to The Boy from the Woods (2020). The hero, a man named Wilde, was abandoned as a child in a chain of the Appalachian Mountains in New jersey. The first mystery details how he survived. This follow-up explores why no one ever claimed him once he was found. Now Wilde seeks answers from an ancestry DNA site; he quickly discovers his father and then finds that he has a second cousin, a reality-show star who has vanished. A group named The Boomerangs, who take it upon themselves to exact violent punishments for cruelty and abuse, may be behind Wilde's cousin's disappearance or death. The premise of Wilde reaching out doesn't fit with his being a fierce loner, nor does his character ever become completely believable. Coben seems to equate speaking very tersely with being tough and capable; the one-to-three-word exchanges of dialogue grow tiresome quickly. Still, the vigilante subplot provides enough excitement to keep the legion of Coben fans engaged.--Connie Fletcher
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Although Coben is not at his best here, his name will be enough to draw a crowd.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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Fletcher, Connie. "The Match." Booklist, vol. 118, no. 11, 1 Feb. 2022, p. 23. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A693527407/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f03a7482. Accessed 2 Mar. 2025.
Coben, Harlan. The Match. Grand Central. (Wilde, Bk. 2). Mar. 2022.352p. ISBN 9781538748282. $29. M
Wilde, who never knew why he was found living in the woods 30 years earlier, submits his DNA profile to several websites, seeking family connections. He meets with a man identified by one site as his father, but his answers aren't satisfying. He tries again, hoping to uncover a link to his mother. Instead, he connects with a relative whose information then disappears from the site. Wilde's resources include a foster sister who owns a security company; together, their search leads to a reality star shamed on social media who has since disappeared. Now Wilde is determined to learn why the reality star is connected with him, and whether online comments destroyed a life. The reality star is also being sought by one rogue member of a vigilante group called Boomerang that finds and punishes cyberbullies. When Wilde's search leads him to a murder victim who was targeted by Boomerang, Wilde himself becomes a suspect. VERDICT The topical follow-up to Coben's best-selling The Boy from the Woods addresses reality shows, DNA searches, cyberbullying, and social media influencers in a suspenseful novel guaranteed to be a hit.--Lesa Holstine
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
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Holstine, Lesa. "The Match." Library Journal, vol. 147, no. 3, Mar. 2022, p. 121. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A696081776/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8b0d1419. Accessed 2 Mar. 2025.
I Will Find You
Harlan Coben. Grand Central, $30 (336p) ISBN 978-1-5387-4836-7
David Burroughs, the protagonist of this disappointing standalone from bestseller Coben (the Myron Bolitar series), has been incarcerated in a Maine penitentiary for five years, convicted of murdering his three-year-old son, Matthew, by beating his head in with a baseball bat. David, who was prone to sleepwalking, has no clear memory of the fatal night. At trial, a neighbor testified that she saw him burying the murder weapon near David's Massachusetts home. The inmate's world is upended when his sister-in-law, Rachel Anderson, a disgraced investigative journalist, visits and shows David a photo taken at a Six Flags amusement park that a coworker of Rachel's exhusband shared with her. In the background is an eight-yeat-old boy resembling Matthew. The possibility that his son is alive sparks a successful escape attempt, enabled by the prison warden, who's conveniently a friend of David's father, and a desperate search for the child in the picture. Oddly, David, who wasn't convicted of a federal crime, was incarcerated in a federal prison, though this circumstance allows two FBI agents to join the manhunt. Early on, scenes from the viewpoint of some conspirators lessen most of the suspense. This is far from Coben's best work. Agent: Lisa Vance. Aaron M. Priest Literary. (Alar.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"I Will Find You." Publishers Weekly, vol. 270, no. 4, 23 Jan. 2023, p. 50. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A741705287/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=6a61d5f1. Accessed 2 Mar. 2025.
I Will Find You. By Harlan Coben. Mar. 2023.336P. Grand Central, $30 (9781538748367); e-book (9781538748404).
Coben's latest stand-alone thriller stars a prisoner convicted of murdering his three-year-old son five years previously. Despite overwhelming evidence, the prisoner, Burroughs, is convinced of his own innocence but too deep in grief to do anything about it. That changes when his sister-in-law visits, showing him a photo from a recent corporate event that captures a boy who looks just like Burroughs' son as he'd look at eight. Burroughs is galvanized into action, convincing the warden, the best friend of Burroughs' father (the first of many coincidences in this story), to help him escape. Burroughs' sister-in-law, luckily a former investigative journalist, also helps him once he's out. The plot moves at a furious pace, like an action movie with lots of violent encounters and breathless escapes. But, like many action movies, the thriller part works, but the mystery doesn't, leaving the reader confused on multiple scores. Too many coincidences, too many improbabilities, and too many loose ends to be entirely satisfying, but Coben's devoted fans--and there are many of them--are more interested in adrenalin than subtlety.--Connie Fletcher
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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Fletcher, Connie. "I Will Find You." Booklist, vol. 119, no. 13, 1 Mar. 2023, p. 29. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A741103608/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c468f301. Accessed 2 Mar. 2025.
Coben, Harlan THINK TWICE Grand Central Publishing (Fiction None) $26.57 5, 14 ISBN: 9781538756317
Sports agent Myron Bolitar meets the Setup Serial Killer, who's found a highly effective way to keep anyone from connecting the dots.
There's no arguing with DNA evidence, the ultimate forensic clincher. So when basketball player Greg Downing's DNA is found on the scene where retired model Cecelia Callister and her son, Clay, were killed, the FBI comes calling on Myron to ask where they can find Greg. Myron's a reasonable person to ask because Greg was his schoolmate and former client, the man who wooed and won Myron's girlfriend away from him and made her Emily Downing. Try as he might, though, Myron can't help much beyond repeating the obvious: Greg died three years ago, and his body was cremated. Since the Feds aren't about to give up their search, Myron and his partner, financial advisor Win Lockwood, decide they'd better see if they can get ahead of this story by confirming or contradicting the story of Greg's death. Meantime, a series of interleaved episodes show the killer eliminating a series of primary targets and framing secondary targets so convincingly for the murders, with special thanks to planted DNA, that it never occurs to the police to connect crimes that were so readily solved on their own. Complications arise when Myron's thrown together with Jeremy Downing, the son he fathered in a pre-wedding tryst with Emily and then passed off as Greg's, and when the allies of mob boss Joseph "Joey the Toe" Turant, who was locked up four years ago after his DNA-fueled conviction for the murder of Jordan Kravat, decide to lean on Myron to get him to reveal where Greg is.
A great premise leads through all the twists you'd expect to a thoroughly muddy final movement.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Coben, Harlan: THINK TWICE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A789814861/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0750180e. Accessed 2 Mar. 2025.