The Harlan Coben Formula
The quiet king of Netflix could lead me off a cliff, but he never would
When I visited the aquarium as a child, I always eagerly awaited riding in the big submarine simulator. I’d wiggle with excitement as I watched the giant black contraption bounce up and down and shake from side to side, knowing that another kid was inside strapped into a chair, staring at a screen transporting their mind miles away. The simulator was designed to make you feel hundreds of feet below the surface of the water, slowly trucking through sea urchins and seaweed, dodging sharks and squids and swordfish. It was a controlled terror: Just when a new beast would show up on the screen and the simulator would shake as the submarine “swam” through rough waters so violently I was sure we were on the brink of real-life crisis, the monster-like sea creature would be replaced with a turtle. The shaking would return to a gentle hum. My heartbeat would work its way back to a steady, slow thud and I would get ready for the next scare. But after several shocks and moments of relief, it would all be over in a matter of minutes. I’d leave my fears behind in the simulator and return to the real world, knowing that I could pick them right back up where I left them the next time I stepped into the ride.
I felt the same way after finishing the latest Harlan Coben thriller on Netflix.
I’ve been reading Coben’s books for years. He’s written around 35 of them and first became a NYT best-selling author in 2001 with his 10th novel Tell No One. Since then, he’s become a mainstay on the list, with his most recent book I Will Find You debuting at number one on the hardcover list in 2023. He’s garnered hoards of fans and secured spots on lists of the most popular thriller writers next to the likes of Michael Connelly and John Grisham. His books typically follow the classic, reliably compelling mystery tropes: missing kids, unsolved murders, innocent people getting framed… you get the gist.
I can’t read Coben’s books back to back because there is a formula so ingrained in them that reading one feels like perhaps you’re reading another. But when I need something mindless that I can trust never to lead me too far from what I know, I dig through the library shelves for a Coben cover I don’t recognize. Twice I have arrived home and cracked open the pages only to realize after a chapter or two that I’ve already read the book. Books of this genre (mystery and thrillers that are as easy to digest as white rice) always appeal to me. My grandfather got me hooked on Mary Higgins Clark (the “queen of suspense” who died in 2020) as a child, and it’s rare for me to walk past a book by Lisa Jewell (a British author who churns out page-turning thrillers) in a bookstore without at least reading the back cover. I even wrote a listable for Penguin Random House’s crime drama site last year on what to read next if you love Harlan Coben. So when the author signed a deal with Netflix back in 2018, I got ready to binge.
Since then, Netflix and Coben’s production company have churned out adaptation after adaption of his books. There are currently eight streaming on Netflix, including Safe in which Michael C. Hall (Dexter in Dexter) plays a man desperate to find his missing daughter, and The Stranger in which a stranger upends everything Richard Armitage’s character knew about his wife. Armitage has now appeared in three of Coben’s productions… the man has learned how to get his hands on a ton of Netflix money somewhat easily, and for that we must applaud him. There’s also The Five, a story about childhood friends who reunite after the DNA of one’s brother is found at a crime scene 20 years after the brother disappeared, with a great cast including O-T Fagbenle who you may know as Luke from The Handmaid’s Tale. That show came out in 2017, pre-Netflix deal and it’s no longer available on Netflix, which is a damn shame because it is by far my favorite. (Anytime there’s a show/movie/book about a break in a decades-old kidnapping, I am seated.)
Netflix’s viewership data is extremely opaque so who knows how popular these shows actually are, but based on how front-and-center Netflix always presents the new ones and the amount of press the shows seem to get, I think it’s safe to say Coben is somewhat of a secret weapon for Netflix. Or at least, a reliable tank that isn’t as loud as a Ryan Murphy or Shonda Rhimes.
In the same way I felt a comfortable fear in that submarine simulator as a child, I trust Coben to scare me — and to even surprise me — but never in a way that feels unpredictable. There are patterns in his storytelling so strong, I’ve come to expect them: a dead loved one isn’t really dead; the person who goes missing was lying about their job (or friendships or hobbies or family or all of the above); the narrator is not quite trustworthy, but they’re always within reason. They’re not exactly new ideas in the world of thriller shows, but Coben usually manages to give a fresh take or at least work in enough twists that I keep coming back for more. When the main character turns out to be the killer, I will be shocked, like when a shark would swim up to bump noses with the camera in that submarine simulator. But I’ve felt that fear so many times before, I trust that it will pass.
Coben’s stories are a safe, contained space. I cannot say the same about books by or TV/movies from the mind of Stephen King, which will almost always take me too far away from what I’m comfortable with. (This is in part why I will fight to the death about King being one of the best writers of our time despite the critics who question King's factory-like production style. Yes King has managed to churn out 65 novels in his career span. What of it? If you were hauled up in Maine with no one to talk to, you'd get a lot done too, dare I say.) Stories like It, Misery and Carrie are so baked into our culture that they shouldn’t be able to get to me anymore but a killer clown, a person way too deep into a fandom and a wronged teen girl out for revenge will scare me every time (this is not a joke. Alexa, play Teenagers by My Chemical Romance).
With a King novel or show, I go into the experience knowing his morbid, kooky little mind works in a way that will always be able to terrify me — and often because the horrors are so far from what I could imagine. Take The Outsider, a story about a young boy’s gruesome murder which was adapted into an HBO show. The premise was already frightening, but made even scarier as King brought in an off-the-walls supernatural element.
Like a King novel, thrilling television is marked by its ability to be extremely unpredictable. It doesn't even have to be within the horror genre. Shows like Riverdale and Pretty Little Liars can go batshit crazy and leave you feeling just a little bit unsettled. We don’t talk enough about that one time a nutsy lady locked the pretty little liars in a life-sized dollhouse she constructed to look like one of their actual homes. (My main question is what was her budget, and why did she not spend it elsewhere?) By stepping outside of a predictable narrative formula, TV can take us to dark places or joyful places, or sometimes both at the same time. We watch TV for a myriad of reasons, and many of them involve delighting in the unknown.
But that’s not why we watch Harlan Coben shows.
The most recent adaptation, Fool Me Once, which came out earlier this month, follows a widower who sees her murdered husband visiting their daughter’s room on the nanny cam. I won’t get into the details because I don’t wait to spoil anything for you (I know… big of me to say after the amount of shows I’ve spoiled in this newsletter), but I went into this trusting Coben to give me a simple thriller perfectly within my realm of comfort and I was right. No supernatural stuff. No feelings that I didn’t want to experience. No killer clowns.
To be clear, I do not necessarily think that Harlan Coben shows are good. They are in fact often a mess, with new characters introduced and quickly forgotten, and loose threads left so willy-nilly you’d think they were one of my many abandoned sewing projects. Sometimes the loose ends are harmless: In one show, the main character who was a pilot teaching another person how to fly a plane suddenly decided they wanted to land said plane and begin a search for someone on foot and just… landed the plane and left the flying student in the middle of a field? In the next scene, the protagonist is in a car and the student is never seen again. He’s probably still out in that field trying to figure out how planes work.
Coben isn't the only writer guilty of this, and abandoned storylines also don't have to be a mark of terrible television. Lots of TV shows trim pieces of the puzzle that don't serve the overall narrative (remember when Roman Roy was a father for 1.5 episodes of Succession?). But often, the abandoned threads do a bit more damage. For example, in that same show, there is a brief shot of one of the protagonist’s best friends dressed in black creeping around the outside of her house and putting a tracker on her car. It’s the beginning of one of those predictable scare tactics Coben uses often: He loves to tease that someone close to the main character is doing something nefarious so we suspect them just to reveal in the end that they were just doing drugs or something. But the best friend tracking the car is never mentioned again. I expected him to not be the killer the protagonist was looking for, but just an obsessive stalker. From what I can tell he was neither? At the end of the show, he’s fully ingrained in the protagonist's circle of family and friends, laughing with them in the final shot. Perhaps he was just trying to keep her safe1 and they didn’t feel the need to explain that. But if any of my friends out there ever decide that the way to keep me safe is to track my car, I would appreciate some explanation (which I will use as evidence in the restraining order I file), thank you!
But I’ve come to appreciate and even love these little moments of what are really just bad TV. Movie critics often say that a movie will teach you how to watch it and I think this applies here. When you’re watching a Harlan Coben show, you have to go a little-empty-no-thoughts. My fiancé is always very concerned with the disappearing characters and the unanswered questions, to which I have to remind him: Shhhh, this is Harlan. Head empty, no thoughts, can’t lose. No one but you cares about that student stuck with the plane in a field. That's how you enjoy. Or how Coben through his dozens of books and TV shows has taught me to, anyway.
There’s a very simple formula to a Harlan Coben show — not necessarily a formula to how the story actually plays out on the screen, but a formula to how it will make me feel: curious, anxious, surprised, relieved, but never actually scared or even uncomfortable. You can place a Coben story into any country in any language and it will feel the same, and often he does just that. Hold Tight and The Woods are in Polish while The Innocent is in Spanish; others take place in the U.K. and the U.S. It’s a formulaic feeling I get excited to experience every time a new Coben show drops. I know I’ll walk into a simulator Coben’s built, get spooked, get shaken around for a bit. Then I’ll leave and look forward to my next visit.
B Plot
Question: Who is a TV character you want to fight and that you think you could actually take?
Mallika: I know this isn’t a new opinion but Ted Mosby on How I Met Your Mother was sooo grating to me. I have a hard time watching this show in general but this man makes me want to lose it. He moves so slowly — think about how long it look him to tell his kids that story — so I could definitely take him.
Rachel: I think Cory Matthews on Boy Meets World just needed a good whooping and as an older sister I am the person to give it to him. This boy had it all. Mr. curly top won the lottery with a partner like Topanga. He had the sweetest, most loyal best friend in Shawn. And he even had an older brother who looked after him when it mattered most. He took them all for granted! He’s so oblivious he wouldn’t even see me coming.
C Plot
We are once again asking: Who are all these childhood reboots for? That’s because Wizards of Waverly Place is getting a revival. Or at least, a pilot has been ordered that will guest star Selena Gomez as her role that started it all, Alex Russo, and David Henrie will be a series regular as her brother Justin. Both of them are executive producers. You know who does not immediately seem to be involved? Jennifer Stone and David DeLuise who played Alex’s best friend and dad in the original show and have spent HOURS of their lives running the show’s rewatch podcast “Wizards of Waverly Pod.” The second hand embarrassment we feel for them right now is unbearable. Someone has to call them. At least make them guest stars … it’s too much for us to handle. One person apparently can laugh at this all and that’s Dan Benson who played Zeke on the show and has since become an adult film star. As he jokes, it’s probably safe to say he is also not getting a call.
In more childhood reboot news, a writer on the Lizzie McGuire reboot — which never saw the light of day — is spilling about what the plot would have been. In one episode, he says, “Lizzie wakes up in Ethan’s bed, in his water polo T-shirt. Animated Lizzie pops up and she has this little checklist, like a to-do list, and Ethan is on the list and she checks it off… I think she says something like, ‘checked that box — dramatic pause — twice.’” Disney apparently did not appreciate this situationship and pulled the plug on the show shortly thereafter. The show sounded like it would have been a blast, although even we have to admit it seems a bit out of character for Ethan Craft. He doesn’t repeat!
Rachel is very conflicted about this And Just Like That… news. Sara Ramirez has been booted off the show, allegedly because their infamous character Che Diaz was “a waste of airtime” and “annoying” fans, but the news dropped suspiciously close to when Ramirez publicly supported a ceasefire in Gaza. As evidenced by *gestures wildly* everything that’s been said and hasn’t been said on red carpets and social media alike, it’s clear Hollywood is filled with a bunch of spineless, amoral losers and so it’s always sad to see someone face backlash for doing the right thing. On the other hand… if we never see a Che Diaz standup set again we will sleep happy…
There were so many headlines this week about how Sam Levinson is working on writing season three of Euphoria as we speak. Well.. yeah we sure as heck hope so? That’s his job and time is ticking. You just know Jacob Elordi’s team is trying to wiggle his way out of this one… the man is booked and busy.
Psssssk a little P.S. from Rachel: Just wanted to say I was very touched by all of your responses to my previous newsletter. As I said in the essay, grief can often be isolating, so hearing how the piece resonated with some of you comforted me in ways I was not expecting. Love you all, and a special thanks to Rick at Too Much TV for sharing it. Although we’re disappointed with how Substack has been refusing to de-platform literal Nazis, this community is such a lovely one and we hope the company does the right thing so it will remain that way.
This may seem bonkers to us but as much as I love Coben’s work, his books — especially those from the 1990s and early 2000s — do typically feature a macho-bordering-on-misogynistic main character who would perhaps be OK with this.
Great. And, regarding Armitage, "appeared" (rather than acted) is right. In the most recent series on Netflix, I don't recall him saying a word of dialogue (or did he? or does it matter?) and ... SPOILER ... it may or may not have even been Armitage in the scene that gets the most screentime.