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As a writer, Harlan Coben has always known how to hook readers fast. In 1990, after his first novel Play Dead landed a publisher, he told The New York Times, “Maybe my secret weapon is that I’m lucky, or that I wrote a book that is easy to get into, so that from page one, the reader wants to keep reading.”
The prolific crime novelist has brought the same strategy to the eminently bingeable adaptations bearing his name. This streaming fodder, made in collaboration with other screenwriters, has become a brand unto itself. While the 64-year-old Coben has now written 35 novels, at the rate of one a year, his TV catalogue was turbocharged in 2018 by a five-year deal with Netflix. That deal granted rights to 14 of his standalone novels and first right of refusal on new TV ideas. In 2022, the contract was extended by four years and included the rights to his Myron Bolitar series featuring a highly principled NBA star-turned-sports-agent.
Coben had been involved in several TV productions (No Second Chance/Une chance de trop, The Five, Just One Look/Juste un regard) before all this, but it was nothing like the steady stream that has flowed since. Brand Coben has earned a reputation as an efficient content-generating machine and many of his books, frequently adapted by Danny Brocklehurst (Safe, The Stranger, Stay Close, Fool Me Once), fit neatly into a compact six or eight episodes.
But why are they so popular? The stories that have been adapted for the screen largely take their inspiration from the everyday, frequently focusing on families and their trials. This makes them universal and readily transportable; they’ve been taken up by production companies in Britain, France, Poland, Spain, Argentina and the US.
Although the books are usually set in American suburbs, their adaptations have been seamlessly relocated to Paris and its environs (No Second Chance), Barcelona and areas in Catalonia (The Innocent), a fictional English town (Safe), an Argentine port city (Caught/Atrapados) and an affluent suburb in Warsaw (Hold Tight/Zachowaj spokoj).
In many, the plot trigger is a missing person – often a child or teenager – and this is a trusty and engaging launching pad, featuring increasingly desperate parents and an atmosphere immediately charged with urgency and threat. These shows are propulsive and packed with plot complications, starting with a rush of energy. The ensuing action is loaded with bombshell revelations, shock twists and the excavation of secrets from a murky past.
The series, on which Coben is generally an executive producer, are a bit like screen versions of fast food: initially tasty, not especially nutritious but somehow leaving you hungry for more. They aren’t the kind of dramas that linger in the mind or that feature significant and substantial questions about the human condition. Sometimes, soon after you’ve seen one, it can be hard to remember who did what or why.
But if you’re keen on crime thrillers, the next time one rolls around, you might give it a shot. However, be warned: some of his series are better than others.
THE BEST
No Second Chance/Une chance de trop (2015)
The first of the adaptations, which was made before the big Netflix deal, is still a stand-out. Alexandra Lamy stars as a Paris doctor who is shot during a home invasion in which her husband is killed and their baby daughter is kidnapped. How’s that for a gotcha opening? The six-parter, based on a novel from 2003, has the classic Coben ingredients: the missing child, the frantic parent (in the book, the doctor is male), and the emergence of buried secrets. Coben serves as both executive producer and showrunner, with a writing team headed by Delinda Jacobs and Patrick Renault. Directed by Francois Velle, the series maintains a potent sense of danger through to the end.
Caught/Atrapados (2025)
Based on a 2010 novel and set in the Argentine city of Bariloche, the six-part drama focuses on crusading journalist Ema Garay (Soledad Villamil), who is renowned for livestreaming her exposure of suspected criminals. The series explores the nature and potential pitfalls of this kind of investigative journalism. Via a plot line involving Ema’s son (Matias Recalt) and, yes, a missing girl, it opens out to look at teenagers’ often-fraught lives and the ways in which their online activities can render them vulnerable to predators. Although there’s a nutty twist at the end – Coben is keen on double-whammy conclusions – the subjects explored here provide fertile and topical territory.
Run Away (2026)
Adapted from a 2019 novel, this 11th series in Coben’s Netflix deal stars James Nesbitt, who’s made something of a specialty of playing intense men with anger-management issues and obsessive streaks. Here he’s Simon Greene, a financier happily married to a doctor (Minnie Driver) who hasn’t seen his drug-addicted daughter, Paige (Ellie de Lange), for six months. After a brief sighting in a park, Simon attempts to make sense of the rupture and track her down. The plot also introduces a mysterious middle-aged woman (Ruth Jones) and a couple of blithe, youthful killers (Maeve Courtier-Lilley and Jon Pointing) working their way through a hit list. Alongside the Greenes’ trauma, there are story stands involving DNA testing, genealogy websites and a cult. Here, the double-whammy finale produces a more satisfying result.
THE WORST
Fool Me Once (2024)
OK, I know, this was one of Netflix’s most-watched shows of its year, demonstrating just how those juicy hooks and pacy plots can pay off. But Michelle Keegan is highly improbable – if not totally unbelievable – as Maya Stern, a former military fighter pilot. Maya’s discovery that her murdered husband (Richard Armitage), scion of a family that made its fortune in pharmaceuticals, might be alive triggers a chain of increasingly implausible events. Joanna Lumley is campy fun as Maya’s embittered mother-in-law, but her character goes way over the top, contributing to a wild ride that careens into absurdity.
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