Book Interview: Harlan Coben on 'the novel of immersion'
Author Harlan Coben. Picture: Claudio Marinesco/PA
- 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, . 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 , , and .
“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.”
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.”
He wrote 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 , , and . One surprise is that these shows often strip away the “American” quality of his novels — Netflix's was set in Cheshire, 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, 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.”
