Harlan Coben (born 4 January 1962) is an American thriller and mystery novelist.
He rose to fame as the author of the Myron Bolitar series, focusing on a sports agent turned accidental sleuth. This was followed up with a brief series of young adult novels featuring Myron's nephew Mickey Bolitar, and ‘’Win’’ a 2021 standalone novel focusing on Windsor Horne Lockwood III, a major supporting player of the Bolitar novels. Since the 2000s, Coben has devoted most of his time to crafting standalone thrillers.
He has won an Edgar, a Shamus, and an Anthony Award, becoming the first author to win all three prizes. His books have sold 75 million copies worldwide, and have been published in 45 languages. Not bad for a guy who initially didn’t want to write for a living.
Many of Coben's works have been adapted for film and television, in addition to creating a few original productions himself. In 2018, he signed a lucrative five year deal with Netflix, with 14 of his novels being optioned as material to be produced as films or series, and with Coben serving as an executive producer on all of them.note As of 2024, seven such adaptations have been produced, excluding the original series Safe, which debuted prior to the deal.
- Myron Bolitar series
- Deal Breaker (1995)
- Drop Shot (1996)
- Fade Away (1996)
- Back Spin (1997)
- One False Move (1998)
- The Final Detail (1999)
- Darkest Fear (2000)
- Promise Me (2006)
- Long Lost (2009)
- Live Wire (2011)
- Home (2016)
- Mickey Bolitar series (Spin-off of the Myron Bolitar series)
- Shelter (2011)
- Seconds Away (2012)
- Found (2014)
- Wilde series
- The Boy from the Woods (2020)
- The Match (2022)
- Windsor Horne Lockwood III series (Spin-off of the Myron Bolitar series)
- Win (2021)
- Standalone 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)
- Fool Me Once (2016)
- Don’t Let Go (2017)
- Run Away (2019)
- I Will Find You (2023)
- Film
- Tell No One (France, 2006)
- Television
- No Second Chance (France, 2015)
- The Five (UK, 2016) (Original series created by Coben, not based on a novel)
- Just One Look (France, 2017)
- Shelter (US, 2023)
- Netflix
- Safe (UK-France, 2018) (Original series created by Coben, not based on a novel)
- The Stranger (UK, 2020)
- The Woods (Poland, 2020)
- The Innocent (Spain, 2021)
- Gone For Good (France, 2021)
- Stay Close (UK, 2021)
- Hold Tight (Poland, 2022)
- Fool Me Once (UK, 2024)
- Untitled Myron Boliter adaptation (US, upcoming)
Tropes relating to Coben and his works:
- Adaptational Location Change: None of the adaptations are set in the US. The locales have instead been changed to the likes of England, France, Poland and Spain. Prime Video's Shelter is the first to actually take place in America.
- Always Murder: Toyed with. As mentioned above, the driving forces of Coben's plots tend to be disappearances rather than killings. Having said that, at least one character will usually end slain by story's end.
- Creator Backlash: He's deeply embarrassed by his first novel "Play Dead", to the extent that he added an author's note at the beginning, warning readers to put the book back, and select one of his later works instead.
