Paul Blezard talks to Harlan Coben.

Transcript of the audio interview with Harlan Coben

About The Innocent

My name is Paul Blezard, and Orion Audio Books have kindly asked me to come into the studio to interview Harlan Coben, author of such books as Deal Breaker, Drop Shot, Fade Away, Back Spin, One False Move, The Final Detail and, more recently, the fantastic Tell No One, Gone For Good, No Second Chance and Just One Look. I asked him where the idea for his latest book came from.

HC: I actually wanted to try to write a slightly darker book. It didn't end up being that much darker, but it did end up being, for some reason, more gripping. I started with the idea that I wanted a guy who was already damaged, so right away in the prologue a lot happens to this man. He gets involved in a fight in college, the same way I think we've all got into some sort of scrape . . . and he's trying to break it up and someone ends up dying.

PB: It's "there but for the grace of God" moments we could all have gone through.

HC: Yeah! What's amazing to me is that everyone who reads the prologue then tells me a story that happened to them where they saw something going wrong. Here, because a person ends up dying, he ends up spending four years in a maximum-security prison, so his life is already thrown apart. And then I want to start the book after he's out, instead of being in the happy suburbs, like most of my characters are. In the case of The Innocent, he's on the outside looking in, his face pressed against the glass, trying to get back to where he once was. And then, of course, as is my job, I have to blow it all up for him.

PB: And indeed you do. Yeah . . . Matt Hunter is quite an interesting one, because he's . . . I mean you've got him as . . . he's sort of an Everyman American guy. He's, you know, he does pretty well at sports, he does pretty well at the academics.

HC: Yeah.

PB: He's doing pretty well at college; he's not an over-achiever. Which is what we're so used to writing about, the sort of cardboard characterised cut-out characters who are just either at the top of their game or conversely at the very bottom of their game.

HC: Right.

PB: I mean, he's everyone's son.

HC: Yeah. I mean I've always liked to write that, in the case of The Innocent maybe especially, but I like to write about the ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances. I never write a book about a big serial killer who kills people for no reason. I don't write political conspiracy reaching Parliament or White House. I prefer to write about people like you and me, people going about trying to do their best but wrong still seems to find them.

PB: Absolutely. There are two strands, two central strands, really, to this story. We have Matt Hunter, who at the time we enter the first chapter of the book is married to a beautiful wife, Olivia . . . Everything's going all right, but then . . . and you're always great with your technology, actually.

HC: Yeah.

PB: Because one of them, Tell No One, was about email - No Second Chance even, I can't remember which one.

HC: Yes.

PB: This one's about camera phones.

HC: Yes. Well it's one of the funny things, whenever you see these things that bring us together - like new technology brings us together, in my mind, I say, well it could really drive us apart. That's what really happens in this case with the camera phone, yeah. It's a wonderful way of keeping us together, but at the same time is it good to see everything someone else does? Maybe not. That's why things are always fun to play with.

PB: Yes, well absolutely, it's a great set-up. The other strand is the kind of the law-enforcement strand. Tell us a little bit about some of the characters there - because again, you've got a brilliant range of characters.

HC: Thank you. Well she's a female police detective, and she's involved in the case of the murder of a nun who they find out right away has breast implants, which doesn't match up with her background, and you realise she's probably not what she said she was.

PB: Sister Mary Rose.

HC: Yes, Sister Mary Rose, and that was . . . Also, I love a line, and the line that first came to me was - I wanted to start a chapter with the line, "Wait a minute, the nun had breast implants!" Just to play with the possibilities. And she was murdered, and Loren Muse is trying to figure out who killed this nun, and somehow these two stories start to intertwine, go together.

PB: They start to conflict. Loren Muse, we discover, went to school with Matt Hunter, way back yonder in the mists of time. But Matt Hunter has also got a private investigator working for him, for reasons that we're not going to give away now. Who is an extraordinary character.

HC: Thank you, thank you.

PB: Where did she come from? Because I have a feeling we may be seeing more of her.

HC: Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Single came back. You know, as a writer, people always ask how you come up with characters, and sometimes the answer is "They're just there". I wish I could describe it better but I was thinking Matt was going to call somebody to help him and all of a sudden Single Shaker, as her name is, was there; I didn't have to sit and think hours about her background or anything like that. In some cases, a story or a character just comes to you the way it is. I wish I could explain it some other way, or give an answer, but that's one of talents or lucks that writers have. She was just there.

PB: Are you being honest that she literally popped fully formed into your imagination? Name as well, because the name Single Shaker . . .

HC: I think the name came first.

PB: It's a brand waiting to happen!

HC: Yeah . . . I mean, who would be named Single Shaker? And I figured she was this, you know, really total wise character, loves to wisecrack, absolutely stunningly beautiful, but working as a private eye, and having these different things about her and . . . But she kind of just came to life. A lot of times, the character starts coming to life more for me - as I start to write them, I learn about them as you do; rather than knowing all about them before they start.

PB: Was it the line for Single Shaker that some of the policeman say that she's got a body that can turn a film rating from child to adult?

HC: Yeah [laughing] exactly. She can knock the film up a rating; her body can knock the film up a rating, which is always . . . Those kinds of things are fun to write, you know.

Researching Novels

PB: Now, there was something I was dying to ask you as I was reading this . . . Law enforcement guys tend not to get a very good reputation in books such as yours and Lee Childs's and George Pelecanos's, and various others whom I consider to be the cream of American, sort of East-Coast American, crime-thriller writing at the moment.

HC: Right.

PB: You have been hugely successful, I forget how many titles you've now got to your name, I mean they're all back cover - what is it, okay, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 with this one? Is there not a responsibility, because this sort of gentle chipping away at law enforcement - real law enforcement - doesn't do much for the public's image of being able to trust law-enforcers. Are you aware of a responsibility as a widely read author to sort of sort of protect and serve the law enforcement agencies as much as your audience?

HC: No, I have no other responsibility, I have no responsibility for anything other than to tell you the best story that I can. However, in the case of Loren Muse, I think she's a great detective, I mean she's . . . There are other people in law enforcement who aren't so good, but in the end Loren is certainly an admirable character and I think a great detective and does a lot of good stuff. But it's not a consideration. I don't sit there saying, "You know what I really need to do, I need to make sure that I make law enforcement look good, or I . . ." If you go in with an agenda of any sort, you are dead as a storyteller. Everything has to be slave to the story, so, no, I don't worry about it, but I also don't think I portray law-enforcement people in a bad light.

PB: There's some interesting stuff in the acknowledgements of this book as well. Because you give a credit to (former) law-enforcement agent Linda Fairstine.

HC: There's another example of a good law-enforcement person.

PB: [laughing] And that blows my argument out of the water! How did you hook up with Linda, and why?

HC: Linda's a good friend of mine... Something that might interest your readers is a . . . small group - I think there are about 10 or 12 of us in something called The Adams Round Table, and we meet once a month for dinner in New York City, and Linda Fairstein's a member, Mary Higgins Clark, Peter Straub, Susan Isaacs, Lawrence Bloch, Thomas Cook, and we meet once a month in New York City and have dinner. And Linda's been a good friend, and whenever I have a question for research in general - I'm a fairly lazy researcher, so my research almost always consists of calling people on the phone, you always get that little nugget, that little inside scoop that you don't find if you read a book on the subject, plus it's a lot easier - so if I have a question I just call up Linda and say, "Linda, what would happen if . . . ?", and then she'll give me the answer, and if I like it I'll use it and if not I'll figure something else out.

PB: So no getting out getting dirty, working out trajectories of projectiles and stuff like that? It's . . . Harlan Coben sitting there on the phone and Googling.

HC: I do a lot of Googling, and I'll tell you why it works for a writer - and if there are people out there who want to write, this is actually, I think, fairly sound advice. A lot of writers use research as an excuse not to write; it's sort of like, "I'll write a scene that takes place at . . . , you know, looking over Big Ben, . . . but first I'll have to actually go out and see Big Ben again, I have to walk the streets and smell the coffee stands". No, no, no! Write the scene now, and then worry about making sure it's exactly right later. Don't let anything get in the way of your writing the book.

PB: Are you saying there are people who let research get in the way of the story?

HC: Oh. definitely, in two ways . . .

PB: That, having done the research, they feel they have to put it in, and then that . . . ?

HC: That's part of it. One is you get that book - we've all read it - where the author learns some cute factoid and has to put it in - and it sticks out like a sore thumb. Not a problem with my books, because I don't know that much. But the other thing is to use it as an excuse, because researching is more fun than writing, so you do a lot of research and won't be writing the book. Generally, anything that's an excuse not to write, I have to figure out of my life.

PB: There are nice little cross-references in this one. You've mentioned Diagon Alley, which I'm sure J K Rowling will be more than happy about, and you've also got some fantastic music references. How important is stuff like that for adding colour to the story you're wanting to tell?

HC: It's not something I consciously think about. I don't say, "Oh, I need a reference here, a reference there". It's just those are the reference points I'm working with in today's world. If I'm listening to a lot of Coldplay, probably so are my characters; if I'm listening to Damian Rice's O, which I've been listening a lot to lately, . . . .

PB: Which you obviously were when you were writing this.

HC: Yes. By the way, it's a wonderful CD, if you haven't listened to it.

PB: Damian Rice's O?

HC: O, yeah, definitely, plug it while were going for it.

PB: Besides Coldplay.

HC: There you go. No, it's fabulous, I listened to it a lot while I was writing this book. They work [themselves] in . . . I've read the Harry Potter series to my children from the beginning, and Diagon Alley is a wonderful way of describing when you go through something into a totally different world. Being beamed down on Star Trek would have been the old reference, but I thought that Diagon Alley worked better.

PB: Diagon Alley is also a great pun; I loved it when I first read it. Are you still enjoying writing? It seems to me that Harlan Coben sort of reached a new gear with The Innocent.

HC Thank you. Writing is always hard and always a pleasure, and it's the greatest job in the world. But each book - I still ask more of myself after 12 books - I have to keep improving, I have to make it even more gripping, resonate even more. And I still love it. Today I walked past a couple of book stores, saw the book in the window, and still got a little chill down my spine, after all this time. And that's, you know, one of the things that drives me.

The Writing Process

PB: How did you go about the writing? Do you have a routine - are you an eight-hours- a-day sort of man, or are you 500 words and as soon as they're done you can watch TV?

HC: No, I never do word counts. I have four young children, ages 11, seven, six and three and a half, so my first job is to get them out of my life - just for a couple of hours, you know. So I get them to whatever school or programme they're going to that day, and then my best writing is usually between eight-thirty and lunchtime, one o'clock. Then I go home around lunch and do some of the business end of writing.

PB: So you don't work at home?

HC: Almost never. I'll tell you why: Writing is hard, as I said before, and you'll find any reason not to do it, so if I'm away from the house there's less reason not to do it. At home, there's the computer - I could check my Amazon ranking (and I'm the only author who's ever done that), but go with me on that.

PB: Oh, do authors do that? I've never heard of that before!

HC: No, I know . . . talk about being honest. No author admits to doing that, that's for sure. [Or I'll], you know, talk to the agent, talk to the editor, you know, you'll find any excuse. First I'll paint my house, then I'll write the book, any excuse not to write. So if I'm out of the house, if I'm at a coffee shop or a library, I have a tendency to work better. Plus I like white noise sometimes, so a lot of times I go to a coffee shop because I like to hear some noise in the background, it makes me concentrate better.

PB: You at least know when you are focusing, because conversely you're aware of when you're not, because you're listening to other people's conversation.

HC: Exactly right.

PB: So you don't have an office, that you just go off to and write . . .

HC: I have an office in my house. I can write anywhere, sometimes it has to be some place new. And whenever it's not working, I just sort of change it so . . . , but I don't write very much at home.

PB: Do you write every day? Are you one of these people who, if you haven't written that day, you have an itch?

HC: I don't write very well on book tours, like right now. I don't know why. I think I'm so concentrated on the book and the . . .

PB: Well, I'd imagine because you're talking about one book whilst in your head you're thinking about another, and you can't live in those two universes at the same time.

HC: That's part of it. I might not write every day, but I certainly think of whatever I'm working on every day, and I try to . . . I've learnt that some days it's just not going to happen. I don't beat myself up about it any more. Some days, pages are not going to come out, but that's also part of the process. I'm working through where the character's going next in my head. Or even when I'm hanging with friends - my friends are used to this - I'll start looking off and they'll know, "Uh, Harlan went off to 'fiction land'". And they understand it, you know, that's just how my mind works. So I never really know how it's going to go. But every day, almost all the time I'm somehow, some place in my mind thinking about the next book.

PB: Remind me how you got started writing, Harlan. As I said in the Introduction, you read Political Science at Amherst. You then worked in the travel industry, but you gave it up to write full time.

HC: Yeah, I started my senior year of college . . . I know most writers come in here and tell you they knew they were going to be a writer when they were a three-month-old foetus, but I was a little later, I was a senior in college.

PB: Not all of them do, by the way, just to . . .

HC: Yeah, they do, always . . . It's amazing how many people . . . I didn't know it was my calling until I was a senior in college and I was working in the travel industry and sending Americans overseas, and I had a summer job working in Spain, not because I'm a brilliant linguist but because my grandfather owned the travel company. Nepotism, pure and simple. And I wanted to write a book about how ridiculously Americans act on vacation - I know it's hard to imagine now, but again, try to follow me here - and I did. I sat down in my senior year in college and wrote an entire novel about Americans on vacation, and it was a terrible, self-important, pretentious, pompous first novel. But I got the bug from that and I started to write what I love, which are these what I call novels of immersion - the book you take on vacation to St Tropez, but you'd rather stay in your hotel room because you have to know what happens to Matt and Olivia and all the rest of them.

PB: You enjoy the journey, then, as much as you hope the reader enjoys the journey?

HC: I do.

PB: You don't know where they're going to end?

HC: I do know how they end. I know before I start, I know all those last twists that I'm going to fool you with, and, I promise you, in The Innocent, I'll fool you with at least two, three maybe . . .

PB: Yeah, you got me . . . You certainly got me with two.

HC: Okay, good. I kind of want you to have one, that's good . . . I know all those before I start; I know how it's going to end before I start. I don't know anything else about the journey: I just know the beginning and the end. I don't know anywhere else.

PB: So the twists have become the fixed points that you write between.

HC: Yes.

PB: You know how the mechanics of those are going to work, and . . .

HC: Yes. I compare it to driving across the US, from where I live in New Jersey to LA. I may take Route 80, which is the direct road, but usually I will stop over in Tokyo or take the Suez Canal or whatever, but I always end up in LA. My favourite, or second favourite, writing quote is from E. L. Doctorow, who says that writing is like driving at night in the fog with just your headlights on. If you want to see a little bit ahead of you . . . , but you can make the whole journey that way.

PB: Absolutely.

HC: What I would add to that, is that I know where the journey is going to end.

PB: Um . . . Now your audio books do extraordinarily well. Do you ever listen to them, do you ever hear your stories back?

HC: I do a little bit, I'll tell you . . . I don't want to listen to them too much, because I once . . . I've gone actually to a couple of tapings in America by some wonderful actors, but the thing is, when I'm listening, I still want to change the line. Or, even though the voice is wonderful, and some readers are great, it's still not my voice, so it sounds awkward to me. So I don't listen to them too much, but I have listened to Tim read my books before and he's a great reader.

PB: Come back in for The Innocent, who's done a fantastic job, absolutely. What does the success mean to you? Twelve novels behind you, you've pretty much won every award worth winning for the style in which you write. How important is that to you?

HC: Well, I was lucky, looking back on it. I started very small, with very modest expectations, I think when my first Myron Bolitar book came out I went to the store and bought four copies, and my publisher called and said, "Oh my God! It's selling so much better than we thought".

PB: Was that Deal Breaker?

HC: Deal Breaker was the first. So I started with very modest expectations. I've enjoyed the process, I've enjoyed . . . and I have appreciation for what's happened now that a lot of writers probably don't have. But I'm still driven today by what drove me before, and that is to tell a better story and thus get more readers. I don't believe writers who say, "I only write for myself; I don't care if anybody reads it. Blah, blah, blah". I write so people will read it. I want you to read it. I want you to fall in love with these characters and I want you to spend time with them. Otherwise I'm clapping with one hand: a book that's unread is a one-handed clap, it's a tree falling in the woods and nobody hears it. So that's still what drives me, to make . . . to write better books. The rest of the stuff, the sales, the hitting the lists and the awards and all that kind of thing - that'll follow, if I always keep my eye on the ball, which is to write the best book possible.

PB: Do you still . . . Are you one of these authors who writes from what he loves or what he knows? There seem to be two schools of authorly thought.

HC: A little bit of both. I mean, I live in these sort of suburbs; I have a life similar to these kind of people. And I have a romantic and skewed vision of what I used to call the American Dream, but really I think it's the World Dream . . . The books are in 32 languages, and people seem to relate to these stories all over the place, so that's a wonderful thing, that we all kind of have, I think, the same sort of goals about raising our families and trying to do right and just living quite peaceful lives. So that's what I love and have an interesting view on, I think, and what I also sort of know. I used to think "write what you know" was nonsense. I'm beginning to revise that as I've gone on. Most of the stuff I do now . . .

PB: Yeah... you write the 'burbs really really well.

HC: Thank you.

The Next Book

PB:What of the future Harlan? Will we ever see a return to Myron Bolitar?

HC: Oh, you'll see him pretty soon, I think. The book I'm writing right now features Myron Bolitar, for the first time I've written him in six years.

PB: How did it feel to get back to him?

HC: It was really . . . it's been very, very interesting. The key thing is not to go back. In other words, I've written seven Myron Bolitar books; I'm not writing the eighth Myron Bolitar book. This is going to be a novel that features Myron Bolitar. He's going to be in a different place; he's going to be a different guy. All the characters are slightly . . . I've aged them a bit, because I don't want to go back in time, I don't want to write the book I would have written had I just continued the Myron series. And it's been very refreshing. I want to kind of take what I learned from writing books like The Innocent and apply it to what I learned writing the Myron books. And so far it's been very exciting, and it was kind of fun to revisit him after all this time, to see what he's up to. He's not as happy as I would have thought he would be, but he's doing okay, you know.

PB: He's not as happy as you'd thought he'd be?

HC: No, I thought he would have been in a little better spot in his life by now. It's been six years. I was hoping he would have found somebody and settled down, but he hasn't. But he'll be all right, though.

PB: So how do you pick up? How do you pick up the first line when you're, you know, six books away from when we last met him, . . .

HC: [Laughs]

PB: . . . as you create what he's going to be?

HC: Well, I put him in a weird situation. He's . . . I don't remember what the first line is now, but he's walking down the basement where there's two teenage girls having a party in his house, and he's listening to them talk and they say something that gets his attention and all of a sudden he has to play the hero again for the first time in six years. So it's been . . . it was a lot of fun . . . you know, he's been trying to avoid trouble. One of the problems with a series is, when you've written seven books in a series, how many times realistically can a man get into trouble and have a catharsis . . .

PB: [Laughing]Yes, exactly!

HC before he's insane, you know? So, that was one of the problems. And I thought, well, maybe if he's had a quiet six years, it would be more realistic and it might have more of an impact on . . .

PB: You're really enjoying this, aren't you?

HC: Oh, I'm having a great time, yeah.

PB: Fantastic. Do you have a title for the next Myron Bolitar?

HC: I never have a title. I didn't have a title for The Innocent until. I haven't actually titled a book myself in about six or seven books, so . . . My editors do it. My publishers come up with better titles than I do. I'm not good with titles.

PB: Do you have titles while you're writing them? Even in your head?

HC: Sometimes I do, yes. I don't remember any more what The Innocent was called in my head, and I flush it right out, but . . . You know, what's funny is that they all end up being kind of misnomers. Because Tell No One - talked; Gone For Good - everybody came back.

PB: No Second Chance - there was a second chance.

HC: Right, exactly, and The Innocent- is he innocent or guilty? It's one of the questions you'll see on the subway posters, who's innocent and who's guilty in this book? So . . . I'm not good with titles.

PB: Your editors do a damn good job, though.

HC: Thank you. Yeah.

PB: So do the manuscripts get sent to your editor with a title or without a title?

HC Sometimes I send them with a . . . like I remember Tell No One was called Big Tears Fall, and my publisher goes, "What is this, a Native American novel? Big Tears Fall, that's terrible", and I said, "You know what, you're right!" And we put our heads together and came up with Tell No One.

PB: Which I have to say is a cracking title and a cracking novel. Well, we sadly have to leave it there. You've been listening to a bonus track on Orion Audio Books with me, Paul Blezard, interviewing Harlan Coben for his latest work, available in hardback from Orion, or indeed on Orion AudioBook. Thank you for listening.