From his Myron Bolitar mysteries to a host of chilling stand-alones, award-winning crime writer Harlan Coben has been entertaining millions of readers across the globe for decades. And now Netflix audiences are joining the party, with the New Jersey storyteller signing a huge deal to adapt more than a dozen of his books into several series in a variety of languages (e.g. The Stranger and Stay Close in English, The Woods in Polish).
We’ll have to wait to see whether there’ll be any screen adaptation of Coben’s 2020 novel The Boy from the Woods, which introduced Wilde, an enigmatic ex-soldier who’d been discovered in the woods as a feral child then fostered out. For now, readers get more of Wilde with this sequel, which continues Coben’s string of propulsive page-turners.
When a DNA match on an ancestry website offers Wilde clues to a family tree he’s never known, he follows the crumbs. Rather than answers, he finds even more questions – along with disappearances and murder. Was a cousin he never met spurred to suicide by online trolls? Coben grabs readers early and hurries us through a tense tale that intersects with modern fears about privacy, celebrity, online bullying, and family secrets coming to light in an online world. The Match is a fast and fun read that, while it doesn’t match the character depth of Coben’s best novels, is still a good way to spend a few hours.
Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With over 80 million books in print worldwide, Harlan Coben is the #1 New York Times author of thirty five novels including and the renowned ‘Myron Bolitar’ series. His books are published in 46 languages around the globe.
Harlan is the creator and executive producer of several Netflix television dramas including Stay Close, The Stranger, Safe, The Five, The Innocent and The Woods. He is also the creator and executive producer of the Prime Video series Harlan Coben’s ‘SHELTER’, based on his young adult books featuring Mickey Bolitar.
Harlan’s novel Tell No One was turned into the renowned French film, directed by Guillaume Canet and starring Francois Cluzet. The movie was the top box office foreign-language film of the year in the USA, won the Lumiere (French Golden Globe) for best picture and was nominated for nine Cesars (French Oscar) and won four, including best actor, best director and best music.
Winner of the Edgar Award, Shamus Award and Anthony Award – the first author to win all three – international bestselling author Harlan Coben’s critically-acclaimed novels have been called ‘ingenious’.
Harlan was born in Newark, New Jersey. He still lives in New Jersey with his wife, Anne Armstrong-Coben MD, a pediatrician, and their four children.
0 Comments