Wise Guys

Long Lost by Harlan Coben. Photo / Supplied

He's known as the master of the "hook-and-twist" and writes the kind of taut thrillers the guy sitting next to you on long plane journeys is always reading. But what you get from a Harlan Coben book is something more than pace and mystery. The best-selling author is also a dab hand at humour. His latest release, Long Lost (Orion, $38.99), brings back sports agent Myron Bolitar and his best mate - the super-rich, super-dangerous Win. The adventure they plunge into is leavened with wise-cracking dialogue.

"I really enjoy snappy dialogue," says Coben on the phone from the New York home he shares with his wife and four kids. "It brings characters and scenes to life. Humour is hugely important and the key is to make it add to the suspense."

Long Lost certainly isn't short on suspense. It's the story of what happens when Myron is approached by an old girlfriend, Therese Collins, who is desperate for his help. Her husband has been murdered in Paris and she's the prime suspect. The big twist comes when blood found at the scene is discovered to come from Therese's daughter - but she died years ago.

"Long Lost to me is a story about loss and possible redemption," says Coben. "There's a real love story going on here but it's a bit different to something you'd normally read."

Coben published his first Myron Bolitar book back in the mid-90s. "In some ways the earlier books had more humour because Myron was more happy-go-lucky," he says. "When I started he was in his late 20s and now he's around 40. I wrote seven straight books about him and put him through a bit of a wringer, I guess because I never wanted the stories to be just about solving a crime, they always had to be special and personal."

Looking for a fresh challenge, Coben took time out from his fictional partner and wrote a stand-alone thriller called Tell No One, which turned out to be his big breakthrough best-seller. Since then he's returned to Myron only twice, much to the chagrin of many of his readers.

"The Myron fans are vocal," he agrees, "but I love that. It's really flattering that people care so much."

So fans will be pleased the character's back at last, but they're going to find this story a bit of a departure from previous Myron books, promises Coben.

"He's never left the New Jersey area and for the first time I take him overseas," he explains. "I'm known as the suburban dad author and always say that I don't write about big international conspiracies, but here I am tossing that out the window. This story starts small and then goes global."

To publicise the book in the United States, Coben is heading out on tour with Australian singer/songwriter Missy Higgins. She sings, they talk about creativity - it's a book event with a difference and there's a quirky story behind how it came about. "I listen to music when I work and sometimes a song will find its way into one of my stories," Coben explains. "A Missy Higgins song made it into my last book Hold Tight and Missy's mum and aunt were reading it on an Australian beach, saw her name and screamed."

After that the singer's management approached him and said Missy was trying to break into the US so Coben agreed to do some events with her. It's not the first time he's given another artist a helping hand. Some years ago he was asked to write a promotional blurb for an up-and-coming writer he knew from his student days at Amherst College. "I loved the manuscript and wrote a great blurb," he recalls.

That author's name was Dan Brown and the book was The Da Vinci Code. Some time later Coben went into a shop to discover Brown's blockbuster was at number one and his own relegated to number two. The same thing happened the following year.

"After that I told him, `no more blurbs'," laughs Coben.

Hollywood hasn't embraced Coben as warmly as it has his old mate Dan Brown. Almost all his books have been optioned, but the only one that's made it into film is Tell No One and that was in France, not Hollywood.

"Rights have just been bought for an American remake so I think that's the one with the best odds of being made," says Coben. "But I try to pay no attention. I just say, invite me to the premiere. I think of it as a barbed-wire fence in the desert. I'm on one side and Hollywood is on the other. I throw a book over, they throw money back."

In the meantime he's written the pilot for a TV series and has started on another book. "I'm on page 40 and Myron hasn't shown up yet so I guess it's not going to be about him."

Although he's made a lot of money from his stories that have been best-sellers in almost a dozen countries, retirement and a quiet life aren't an option for Coben.

"It's not my personality," he says. "You don't want to give me too much idle time. I don't have any hobbies, just my kids and my writing. If I didn't work, what would I do?"