Best selling author Harlan Coben, who is also a basketball fan, took in a Raptors game at the ACC in Toronto on March 28, 2012.
Six-foot, four-inch New Jersey novelist Harlan Coben is already tall enough, but he was walking another three feet off the ground last week when he learned that his latest thriller, Stay Close, was set to debut at the No. 1 position on The New York Times bestseller list six days after its release.
"It's the fifth time in a row," the former college basketball player said, striding through the lobby of the Air Canada Centre in Toronto to take in a game between the local Raptors and visiting Denver Nuggets, "but it never gets old."
With more than 50 million of his books in print worldwide, including a 10-book series featuring ballplayer turned pro-sports agent Myron Bolitar, Coben is a publishing colossus masquerading as an anonymous suburban family man. We sat down to talk with him as the Raptors beat the Nuggets 105-96.
Can you get any bigger?
You can always have more readers. I've never chased the dollar, I've always chased the reader's heart. I love having more readers. The more people who read it, the more thrilled I am.
What do you call the type of book you write?
I call it the novel of immersion – the book you take on vacation but you'd rather stay in your hotel room because you have to know how it's going to end. Or the book you start late at night thinking you're going to read for 10 or 15 minutes and the next thing you know it's 4 in the morning and you're deliriously happy. I love when I have that feeling and the idea that I give that feeling to other people is really heady.
What kind of story ideas most appeal to you?
It's often something mundane that I twist around. I ask "what if?" all the time. One time I was picking up my family photographs at the store, and for one second I thought there was a photo there I didn't take. And I thought, What if there was a picture I didn't take? What if that picture changed my life? What if that picture changed everything I thought about those I knew and loved? That became Just One Look.
I don't normally write about big serial killers who hack up people for no reason. I don't usually write the conspiracy reaching the presidency. It's normally about people like you and me trying to do their best, but wrong still seems to find them.
Are you still a big basketball fan?
I go to more hockey games now than basketball games. I find hockey more exciting. But I do enjoy going. I don't necessarily love the sports per se, I love the stories behind them. Also in a kind of perverse way I like to study what it does to us, why we care so much. It's caring about something that's utterly meaningless.
How is Stay Close different from your previous work?
I think it's a little darker. Usually I'm more of a happy suburbanite. My viewpoint is people in suburbia who are doing well and love it and something goes wrong to take it away from them. But in this case Megan [the protagonist]has found this American Dream but she's feeling restless. I like that. These characters are more real to me – maybe not as likeable, but more real – and I think that works.
I love to make even villains people you can relate to. When you find out who did it, I think you almost like the person, which is not easy to do. It's not hard for me any more to write a very fast-paced book where I stir your pulse. But if I don't stir your heart in some way I don't think I've given you full measure.
You write at least one book a year. Have you ever considered slowing down?
I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.
I've always wanted to write a better book than the one before and the rest takes care of itself. I don't worry if e-books are going to take over or whatever. If I write a great book you'll read it on stone tablets or e-books or paper. I've just got to stick with what I do.
This interview has been edited and condensed.