Harlan Coben

Harlan Coben is an American author of suspense and mystery fiction best known for standalone thrillers built around ordinary people whose lives are upended by a shocking discovery, alongside the long-running Myron Bolitar series, following a former basketball-star-turned-sports-agent who gets drawn into crime investigations through his athlete clients. His standalone novels, including Tell No One, Gone for Good, and The Innocent, popularized a signature structure of a devastating opening hook followed by a plot full of late reversals, and several have been adapted into French and other international films, most notably Tell No One (Ne le dis à personne).

Coben has become an especially prominent figure in television adaptation, with numerous Netflix series drawn from his standalone thrillers, including The Stranger, Safe, The Woods, Stay Close, Fool Me Once, and others, many relocated to British settings for the screen. He also writes the Mickey Bolitar young-adult spin-off series, following Myron's nephew. New readers can pick up almost any standalone Coben thriller without prior context, since they are not serialized; the Myron Bolitar series is best started with Deal Breaker. He remains one of the most commercially successful thriller writers working today, releasing a new novel roughly annually alongside a steady stream of television adaptations.