Harlan Coben

Interviewed by Michael Carlson

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Last summer when Harlan Coben came to London he was plagued by a terrible cold. This time he's looking lean and mean, and he's his usual entertaining self. Plus he wants to know how his New Jersey Nets have done in the NBA playoffs, and I can tell him they've just beaten the Celtics in their Conference Final matchup. But Harlan's just come from Washington DC, where he was the guest of the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, a self-confessed Coben fan. They had drinks on the balcony of the Senate, looking out at the famous reflecting pool. Coben at the centre of government is a frightening thought in some ways. "It was the coolest night of my life," Harlan said, as we sipped coffee in his London hotel. "He even had YooHoo on ice." Since YooHoo (a rather sickly chocolate drink) is the signature favourite of Coben's sports agent-cum-detective Myron Bolitar, I wondered if that made him nostalgic for the character, since his last two novels have both been stand-alones. "No, I don't think so… leaving sports was the best thing that ever happened. Myron never hit the New York Times' bestseller list, but both my last two books have, so it must have been the right time to move. There's not always enough freedom in a series if you want to keep making it better -- how many catharses can one man go through (I mean Myron, not me!). He'd have to go insane if he were real." Which explains Mike Hammer. "Exactly. Plus the story ideas I was coming up with just wouldn't work for Myron, he had too much back-story already established."

So your next series will feature a guy named Stan Dallone? "Ugh. Actually, I don't like to talk about what I'm writing now… I find it sort of lets the air out of the balloon." The Myron books are often about family ties, and both Tell No One (his first stand-alone) and Gone for Good (his latest) feature long-lost family members returning to disrupt the lives of those they left behind. "Families always interest me because of the ties and bonds, and the acute sense of betrayal. I think my novels work because they're not just about serial killers, or a conspiracy that reaches all the way to the White House." The suburban setting highlights the family conflicts, and makes the crimes more shocking? "I like writing novels set in suburbia, the last battleground of the American Dream," Coben chuckles. "Where everyone lives to do the right thing, but wrong still finds you underneath the mask." There's a Disney quality to the facade? "Well, Livingston, New Jersey, is actually one bad-ass town," he jokes. "It's not the Jersey of Tony Soprano. Well, when I grew up there was one actual house which everyone knew was owned by some Mafia bigwig… if you stepped on the property you'd get shot."

Your suspense books have a very Hitchcockian feel. "Yes, in the sense of putting an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances. I like to put people under pressure to see how they react. But with Gone for Good I also wanted to see what happens to the family of the perpetrator of a horrible crime. We know the victim's family is shattered, but the perp's family can be shattered too, by all that pressure." Your male leads are always hopeless romantics. "Yes, Will Klein idolises the women in his life, but for him it's not a strength, it's a weakness. It blinds him to certain things he might otherwise see." That blindness makes it easier to twist the story… "I try to twist it every which way I can. I want to be unpredictable. I'll give you one, that maybe you can see coming, but then I want to keep ahead. I know the beginning and the ending when I start, then I try to make it as interesting as I can getting from one to the other. Once, I was really stuck on what to do with a character, and I was suffering from strep throat and fever. Well, I had this idea, and usually when you write down those kinds of ideas, like dreams, they make no sense when you wake up, but this time, it did. So I know if I need to, I can always get sick. But I always hate it when writers say 'the story flows through me -- the character takes over': for me that's just never the case. The plot, or idea, comes first, and then I see who would tell this story. But once you know the rules you can start to break them.

"I started both novels in first person and both times I switched to third, and in both I think it works. The Myron books were told in a kind of 'cheating third-person' which actually sounded like first. You have to find which is the best way to tell the story because I don't want people to miss the fun by 'reading' the book… I love the feeling as a reader when you simply disappear into the book's world." Who does that for you? "Philip Roth, the Newark Jewish Shiksa Master! Recently I've liked a writer named Christina Chu, sort of Amy Tan with attitude. I really like my British colleagues Ian Rankin and Val McDermid. In fact when I hit the British bestseller list behind them, I told them what a better world it would be without Ian and Val. Just kidding!" Last time we talked you had finished a Myron teleplay. "Oh yes, for 20th Century Fox. That's where the four VPs of Development, who range in ages between 18 and 18 and a half, tell you how it's all so brilliant they only want to make a few changes, starting with the first word. What we love about you is your edge. Can we lose the edge? I've no interest in writing another script -- it looks easier than it is -- the best thing to do is just take the money and run. But Tell No One is supposed to start filming this summer with Michael Apted directing, and Gone for Good is being made in a BBC-style mini-series format, six one-hour episodes, for USA Network." And like your characters, you're a real family man. You've just had your fourth child. "Yes, having four kids in the house is good and bad. Mostly bad! Actually, I've enjoyed it so much I'm having to make myself enter the zone to begin the next book. My wife's back to working, at the rescue centre that was in Tell No One. I tell her she needs to find a new job so I can get another idea to write a new book!