Harlan Coben
Harlan Coben 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. His books have been translated into 46 languages and sold over 90 million copies.
Early life and education
Harlan Coben was born on January 4, 1962 into a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, and was raised in Livingston, where he graduated from Livingston High School, with his childhood friend, future governor Chris Christie. His brother is the noted businessman Lawrence S. Coben.He studied political science at Amherst College, where he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity, along with Dan Brown. Coben was in his senior year at college when he realized he wanted to write.
Career
After graduating in 1984, Coben worked in the travel industry, in a company owned by his grandfather. 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. 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. 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.
In 2003, Coben published a short story about his father, who had died of a heart attack at the age of 59 in 1988. Entitled "The Key to My Father," the story was published in The New York Times on Father's Day, June 15, 2003. Besides The New York Times, his essays and columns have appeared in Parade magazine and Bloomberg Views.
In 2025, Coben published his first collaborative co-authored novel, Gone Before Goodbye, with Reese Witherspoon.
Recognition and awards
Coben's books have been translated into 46 languages and sold over 90 million copies. He has won an Edgar Award, a Shamus Award, and an Anthony Award—the first author to receive all three.In 2010, Live Wire won the crime fiction award, the RBA Prize for Crime Writing, worth €125,000.
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.
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.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. Coben also created the French-British crime drama television show Safe, which premiered on Netflix in 190 countries on May 10, 2018.
Film and TV series
Early adaptations
The first of Coben's works to receive the screen treatment was his 2001 novel Tell No One, which was adapted into a 2006 French film of the same name. The film was a box office success and was widely praised, being nominated for nine César Awards, and winning four. Two further novels were adapted as miniseries for France's TF1 broadcaster: 2015's No Second Chance and 2017's Just One Look.The 2016 Sky1 drama The Five was an original series created by Coben, who followed suit with the C8/Netflix show Safe.
Netflix
In August 2018, following the success of Safe, 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. The first one was The Stranger which premiered in January 2020. In October 2022, Netflix extended the deal for another 4 years, with the Myron Bolitar series now also available for adaptation. On February 20, 2023, Fool Me Once was announced as an upcoming adaptation in production for Netflix. Run Away, the eleventh series under the deal, released on January 1 2026.Others
In 2022, Amazon Studios announced plans to produce a series based on the first Mickey Bolitar novel, Shelter. Jaden Michael stars as Mickey, alongside Constance Zimmer, Adrian Greensmith, Abby Corrigan, and Sage Linder. The series, Harlan Coben's Shelter, was released on August 18, 2023. In 2025, Prime Video released the series Lazarus, based on an original concept by Coben.As of 2026, Coben hosts the true crime documentary series Harlan Coben's Final Twist for CBS.