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Author Harlan Coben is at his desk in his apartment in New York’s famous Dakota building. It’s a grand room with a big hardwood door and art on the walls. Winslow, his havanese dog, is scratching outside. ‘I was in this room when I got the call,’ he tells me. ‘People often suggest collaborations, but I say, “Respectfully, that’s not for me.” I thought, “How do I nicely tell Reese Witherspoon, who I love, this is a no?” But when she told me her idea, I was quickly thinking, “OK, maybe if we move this bit here and that bit over there.” Now we are obsessed with this collaboration.’
Coben, 63, has sold 80 million books and has a 14-books-to-screen mega-deal with Netflix. Witherspoon, 48, has an Oscar and her own celebrity book club. Writing a novel together is a match made in heaven.
‘We talk or text every day or she comes here,’ he says. ‘Reese is a wonderful storyteller and very bright. Also, she reads me well: when to push and when to back off. I couldn’t work with many people, but I can with Reese.’
Is Coben the luckiest author alive? Not only is this as-yet-untitled new Witherspoon novel going well, his 36th solo thriller Nobody’s Fool will be published this week. The Netflix adaptation of his novel Fool Me Once amassed more than 100 million views and was one of the streamer’s most-watched original series in 2024. Meanwhile, Run Away – Coben’s latest Netflix project – starring Minnie Driver and Ruth Jones is filming in Manchester. He is a regular visitor to the sets of his productions. ‘Ruth Jones is going to surprise a lot of people. She is incredible in it,’ he says.
Coben was born and raised in suburban New Jersey but is a big anglophile. His younger brother, Craig, has lived in London for almost 25 years and Coben visits often. (Both brothers have been spotted, along with British presenter and novelist Richard Osman, watching Fulham FC.) Many of his TV adaptations are set in the UK and last June he met Queen Camilla at The Queen’s Reading Room Festival at Hampton Court Palace. They were introduced by unofficial royalty Joanna Lumley – a friend of Coben’s since she starred in Fool Me Once.
‘Dame Jo and Camilla are good friends,’ says Coben. ‘She told me, “You’re going to love her!” before she did the introductions. They are two fantastic women. British stars are interesting and down to earth. Some people are afraid of meeting their idols, but Queen Camilla, Jo, Bill Nighy, who I just did a show with [Lazarus, due later this year on Amazon Prime Video], and Jennifer Saunders are all deserving of that kind of respect.’
What did he make of the Queen? ‘She is a reading nerd,’ he says. ‘The couple of times we’ve met she’s been a delight. She’s funny and interesting and she loves the book world.’ Could he collaborate on a thriller with Camilla? He chuckles: ‘Well, yeah – but that would depend on the story, otherwise that’s not fair to either party.’
Coben’s first job, at 18, was as a rep for his family’s travel agency. ‘I worked in the Costa del Sol taking care of older American tourists during the day and then as a DJ in a disco at night. Lots of British people came from a company called Thomson. It was a bacchanal.’
He then went to Amherst College in Massachusetts to study politics and, in his final year, wrote a novel based on his experiences in the travel business. It was called Aim to Please – ‘because that’s your job as a holiday rep and also because I’m not good at titles! I still have it unpublished in a drawer somewhere. Rightly so – it was terrible.’
Nevertheless, there seems to have been something in the water at Amherst. Coben’s neighbour in the first year was David Foster Wallace, who went on to write the critically acclaimed Infinite Jest. ‘He was a genius,’ says Coben. Another college friend was an aspiring musician called Dan Brown. Brown later turned his attention to writing fiction and his 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code sold over 80 million copies. ‘I was one of the first people to read the manuscript. I knew it was special, and I could see that the novel was going to break out. I warned him, “Your head is about to get messed with”, but neither of us realised just how prophetic my words would be.’
Brown’s new novel The Secret of Secrets will be out in September. Do they compete? ‘Well, I can’t wait to see his new book. He and I are still friends. Last Christmas we rented a house down the street from where he was and we played golf together and hung out.’
Coben’s fictional milieu is often suburban America, where evil lurks behind apparent normality. ‘That’s where I grew up,’ he says. ‘A placid suburban town. But in the summer between year seven and eight, two guys from my school got into an argument – I believe about bullying – and one stabbed the other and killed him. I knew the murdered kid. It was a shock, and I became interested in what goes on below the surface.’
There’s more. ‘A leading mafioso lived in my town and a rumour started that he burned bodies in his backyard. That turned out to be true. And next door to Riker Hill Elementary School there was a barbed wire fence with a “keep out” sign. There was rumoured to be a nuclear missile base in there – that was true, too. This is what inspired me: evil hidden in ordinary places, where the American Dream is what everyone aspires to.’
Ironically, Coben has lived that dream. He has been married to Dr Anne Armstrong-Coben, a professor of paediatrics and his college sweetheart, for 37 years. They have four children, aged between 20 and 30. Charlotte is a writer (she has her own show, Dead Hot, on Amazon Prime Video). Ben works for his father’s production company Final Twist. Will is a flight controller at Nasa. And Eve is a genetic counselling assistant at Columbia University, where her mother also works. ‘That’s the part that feels incredible,’ says Coben proudly. ‘All four are ridiculously talented and, more importantly, fine people.’
After Coben left college, Anne agreed to support him while he wrote a novel. She gave him two years to succeed. In 1990, aged 28, he published his first thriller Play Dead, the story of a newlywed supermodel whose husband disappears while enjoying a swim on their honeymoon.
‘I don’t know how anyone does it without a supportive spouse,’ he says. ‘It was a lottery ticket and I moved up the ladder very slowly. I was getting £3,000 a book to start with and I was still on £3,500 by the fourth one.’ How much does he get for a book now? ‘You can ask but I won’t tell you,’ he says, smiling. At any rate, some estimates reckon he is now worth £19 million.
His 2001 book Tell No One made him a star and was turned into a successful 2006 French film starring Kristin Scott Thomas, which inspired Coben to specialise in foreign adaptations. ‘Initially it was a Hollywood project, but I hated the script and I took the chance to get out of the deal. At the same time this crazy French guy Guillaume Canet [the film’s director] kept calling and I loved his ideas. Everyone was like: “You’re crazy! You’re passing up the chance for your book to be a Hollywood film!” But I had a good feeling. The whole world is not America and I’m so happy I went with my instinct.’
As well as their Dakota apartment, Coben and Anne have a nine-bedroom Victorian mansion in Ridgewood, New Jersey. He also collects art and recently bought himself a Tesla. That’s a surprise because he famously likes to be driven; he wrote substantial parts of 2015’s The Stranger in the back of Ubers.
‘Writing in an Uber gives me a jolt,’ he says. ‘The fare makes me think: “I’d better do some work.” At the end of each week my mother and father sat at the table balancing the books. Anne and I still have that mindset. The best part of having money is not worrying about it, but that’s hard to let go.’
Work calls. Coben has a scene to write with Witherspoon. But surely he doesn’t need to do it. After 36 novels, doesn’t he want to retire? ‘No,’ he says. ‘On a scale of one to ten, every book is an 11 in terms of struggle and effort. But it’s a calling. As long as I still have those “What if…?” moments [he means, for example, ‘What if this plot twist happens or what if this character dies’], I’ll go to my desk every day.’
Nobody’s Fool will be published on Thursday by Century in hardback £22, ebook and audio. To order a copy for £18.70 until 6 April, go to /books or call 020 3176 2937. Free UK delivery on orders over £25.
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