Long Lost



A Conversation with Harlan Coben

Tell us about your latest book, CAUGHT, coming our on March 23th.

17 year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst.

Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission, to identify and bring down sexual predators via elaborateÑand nationally televisedÑsting operations. Working with local police on her news program Caught in the Act, Wendy and her team have publicly shamed dozens of men by the time she encounters her latest target. Dan Mercer is a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens, but his story soon becomes more complicated than Wendy could have imagined.

What gave you the inspiration for this book?

A combination of things. The ideas for my books always come from “what if” questions I ask myself. In this case, the what if came when I was watching a show on television where they catch criminals and I started wondering, “Suppose someone I know was nailed on one of those shows? Suppose it was someone I liked and trusted and he insisted that he was innocent?” That’s what got the ball rolling.

How does the actual writing of a new novel evolve once you get the first idea?

You sit and you write and you hate it and you love it and you keep putting one word down, then another, then another. If there is an easier way, I hope someone will tell me.

What made you become an author? Was it more out of passion or fluke? We assume you had written before your first novel is that correct?

I think, like with most authors, it is both a passion and a fluke. I loved writing. I had a passion for telling stories, but without a few good breaks, I’m not sure that I’d be where I am today.

In CAUGHT, disappearing is once more at the centre of your new novel. Quite often one of the characters who we thought had disappeared comes back into the life of one of the main characters. How do you explain this?

I love disappearances. If someone is dead, well, they are dead. You can solve the crime but you cannot bring them back. With a disappearance, there is hope  and hope can make your heart sing or it can crush it like a plastic cup. That’s what I love about it.

You are, alongside Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown, one of the most read foreign authors in France. What do you think of the work of these two authors?

My teenage daughter is a huge Stephenie Meyer fan, and Dan Brown and I have been friends since college  I was one of the first to read and endorse THE DAVINCI CODE. In short, I’m proud to be in their company.