The Stranger

Harlan Coben is an American author who made his writing debut in 1990 with the thriller Play Dead. He then crafted a mystery series following accidental detective Myron Bolitar, which now totals 12 books. At the same time, Coben released several standalone mystery/thriller novels, including the bestsellers Tell No One, The Boy From the Woods, and I Will Find You. In total, Coben has published 38 books, which have been translated into 46 languages around the world and have won him countless literary awards.

Several novels have received film adaptations, like Tell No One, the 2006 French-language adaptation of which won four Cesar awards. Coben has an exclusive production deal with Netflix to adapt his standalone novels, and 13 of these mini-series have been released by British, French, Spanish, and Polish creative teams. The Stranger’s Netflix series released in 2020, created by a British team and starring Richard Armitage as Adam, Siobhan Finneran as Johanna, and Hannah John-Kamen as a gender-bent version of the stranger.

Coben’s novels, though numerous, maintain similar themes and plot devices, with one journalist even calling him the “Master of the Missing Person” (Rubinstein, Mark. “‘The Stranger’: A Conversation With Harlan Coben.” Huffington Post, 25 Mar. 2015). Many Coben mysteries involve someone going missing or being presumed dead, with an investigation filled with twists and surprise revelations. Like The Stranger, it is common for the characters to learn a secret or confront new information that changes everything they thought they knew about their lives. Characters like Adam—ordinary people just trying to keep themselves and their families safe—are thrust into impossible scenarios where they must seek out the truth if their lives are ever going to return to normal.

Coben’s novels also seek to interrogate larger societal issues, like class divisions, gender divisions, and the limitations of the law. The Stranger fits squarely into these themes while also utilizing the unique, fictional setting of Cedarfield, New Jersey, to examine the highs and lows of the American dream and the façade of suburban perfection.