7 Harlan Coben Series That Could Be Headed to Netflix
Netflix seems to be producing adaptations of Harlan Coben novels faster than Coben can write them! Under its multi-million 2018 contract with the novelist, Netflix has produced 10 out of the 14 originally-planned TV series based on Coben’s books.
Already, Coben’s novels Gone for Good, No Second Chance, Just One Look, The Innocent, The Woods, Hold Tight, Stay Close, The Stranger, and Fool Me Once have all been adapted into TV series (which we’ve ranked). Missing You will come to Netflix on January 1, 2025, followed at some point by series-long versions of Caught, Run Away, and I Will Find You. Prime Video made a series, Shelter, from Coben’s Mickey Bolitar book series, and Netflix is developing one from the author’s YA Myron Bolitar series. (Oh, and Netflix also acquired Coben’s Six Years for feature-film adaptation.)
So the list of Coben stories without TV adaptations is getting ever shorter, but a handful of his works are still waiting for the small-screen treatment. Here are those books.
Play Dead (1990)
In Coben’s first novel, Play Dead, supermodel Laura Ayers is devastated when her husband, Boston Celtics star David Baskin, goes for a swim around Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and never returns. Laura searches for the truth about David’s demise, only to get caught up in a 30-year-old web of lies of deception. In praise for the book, People said Coben’s plot “keeps the reader off balance with innovative storylines and diabolical bad guys.”
Miracle Cure (1991)
Another thriller about a basketball player, Miracle Cure tracks New York Knicks player Michael Silverman as he is diagnosed with HIV/AIDS around the same time an Upper West Side doctor appears to have found a cure for the virus. But then the doctor’s patients start dying, targeted by a serial killer, and Michael may be the next victim. Publishers Weekly said Coben “adroitly applies the fundamental rules of thrillerdom … in this highly entertaining novel.”
Tell No One (2001)
Already adapted into a 2006 French film, Tell No One follows Dr. David Beck, who has been haunted by the disappearance of his wife for eight years… then finds a computer message with a phrase only he and she know. The message instructs David to tell no one, so he alone must follow the breadcrumbs for a chance of reuniting with his long-lost love. Mystery writer Jeffery Deaver called this book “suspense at its finest.”
The Magical Fantastical Fridge (2016)
This one’s for the kids! In the picture book, The Magical Fantastical Fridge, written by Coben and illustrated by Leah Tinari, young Walden escapes family dinner night — and the chores thereof — by disappearing into one of his drawings on the fridge. Soon Walden is facing a crayon monster, a group of cannonballing monkeys, and an ice-maker earthquake. Publisher Dial Books calls The Magical Fantastical Fridgea “zany, surprise-filled journey” for fans of David Wiesner and William Joyce.
Don’t Let Go (2017)
In Don’t Let Go, Napoleon “Nap” Dumas, a detective in suburban New Jersey, has been hunting for answers ever since senior year of high school, when Leo, his twin brother, and Diane, Leo’s girlfriend, were found dead. Now a set of fingerprints turns up in the rental car of a suspected murderer — fingerprints belonging to Nap’s high school girlfriend, who disappeared that same year. The Providence Journal deemed this book a “shattering tour de force of a classic mystery.”
The Boy from the Woods (2020)
The Boy From the Woods focuses on a security expert named Wilde, who was found living in the woods as a child, with no memory of his past. Now Wilde and a criminal attorney named Hester Crimstein, to whom he has a tragic connection, are the only ones who are taking a young girl’s disappearance seriously. Thriller novelist Lisa Jewell said this story — the first book in Coben’s Wilde series — is “a helter-skelter of a read!”
Win (2021)
In Win, when a recluse is murdered in his NYC penthouse, one clue is a suitcase bearing the initials of Windsor “Win” Horne Lockwood, a sidekick from Coben’s Myron Bolitar series. Another clue is a Vermeer painting that was stolen from the Lockwood estate — along with Win’s cousin Patricia — more than 20 years ago. And Win has his own unique brand of justice in this book with “pulse-pounding action scenes [that] will keep the pages at least semi-frantically turning,” BookPage says.
From TV Guide Magazine
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