In Harlan Coben’s new thriller, a detective digs up buried secrets
Does Harlan Coben ever have a bad year professionally? I don’t know, but 2017 has turned out to be a stellar year for him.
Starting this month, Netflix subscribers can stream Coben’s first television drama, “The Five.” It follows a group of friends who made a tragic mistake in 1995 — they went into the woods to hang out. Not wanting their fun to be dragged down by a tattling 5-year-old, they sent the youngest member of the group home. He disappeared and is presumed dead until his DNA shows up at a crime scene 20 years later. It’s a highly addictive 10-part series that brings Coben’s signature twists to the small screen and supports the theory that we truly are living in the golden age of television.
Coben’s next Netflix project, “Safe,” will debut next year. Written by Danny Brocklehurst (“Shameless”), the series follows a single dad (Michael C. Hall of “Dexter” fame) raising two daughters after the death of his wife. All seems to be going as well as can be expected until his oldest daughter sneaks out to attend a party one night. A murder and a disappearance follow, destroying the grieving family’s peace.
So where does all of this television success leave fans of Coben’s books? Don’t worry, he’s got no plans to change a thing when it comes to producing one novel a year.
In fact, his 31st novel comes out this week. “Don’t Let Go” delves deep into the somewhat unstable psyche of New Jersey detective Napoleon “Nap” Dumas, who is haunted by questions and doubts from his past. Nap’s twin brother, Leo, and Leo’s girlfriend, Diana, were found dead on the town’s railroad tracks one night during their senior year. Soon after, Nap’s own girlfriend, Maura, disappeared. In a twist that will sound familiar if you’ve watched “The Five,” Maura’s fingerprints show up 15 years later in the rental car of a murder suspect.
Nap soon hones in on a secret society his twin had belonged to back in high school. The Conspiracy Club is described as a “goofball group of likeminded nerds” who wore matching crossed-C lapel pins to denote membership, but when the adult Nap delves deeper into the relationship between this seemingly innocuous club and the tragic losses he’s faced, he uncovers the group’s true mission. An old Nike missile base in town had been shuttered years before, and the Conspiracy Club wanted to find out what happened after it closed.
In an author’s note, Coben tells readers he was inspired by two legends he heard in childhood surrounding his suburban New Jersey hometown. The first is that a notorious Mafia leader lived in one of the most conspicuous mansions in town and that he had a makeshift crematorium in the back. The second is that near the town elementary school, behind no-trespassing signs and barbed-wire fencing, there was a Nike missile-control center with nuclear capabilities. Coben says he later learned that both legends were true.
“During the Cold War — I’m talking about the 1950’s — the Army hid these bases in suburban towns like ours,” says Nap, his detective, in “Don’t Let Go.” “They stuck them on farms or wooded areas like this. People thought it was just an old wive’s tale, but they were real.
“There is a hush in the air. We move closer. I can make out what must have been old barracks. I try to imagine the scene — the soldiers, the vehicles, the launch pads.
“Forty-foot high Nike missiles with nuclear warheads could have been launched from right here.”
Readers who are quick to think this new detective may read like Coben’s well-established Myron Bolitar character need to stop right there. Nap is the most unreliable narrator of any of Coben’s books I’ve read. In the first meeting readers have with him, he beats a man senseless with a baseball bat. He’s big on vigilante justice despite his official capacity.
“Myron’s a lot more happygo-lucky,” Coben said in an interview. “Nap is a much darker character. As a novelist, I see a lot of things in gray. If things are too black or white, a novel gets boring. I like characters that aren’t all good or all evil.”
He added: “Think of it this way. Your Astros are doing so well — imagine the foul line on a baseball field. I like to play right on that line where just on one side, fair is fair, and just on the other side, foul is foul. In books, I like to put my toe right on the line, or blur that line.”
His affinity for Houston is still strong, as evidenced by the fact that he made it part of his five-city author tour; he’ll be at Murder By The Book on Saturday.
He sends two of his kids to Rice University; one is a junior and one is a freshman. As long as his boys are here, Coben said, he’ll continue to make Houston visits a priority.