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.