10/04/2014 Meet the Author

And now it's time for Meet the Author with Nick Higham. This weeks

guest is Harlan Coben, whose book Missing You is a whodunit thriller

set in New York. Harlan Coben is one of America's

most successful thriller writers. His books have sold millions and

made him a millionaire. Missing You is his 25th. It is about identity

theft and online dating. It is likely to confirm your worst fears

of what might happen if you meet someone on the Internet. His

protagonist is a New York police detective mourning the loss of the

love of her life who disappeared suddenly and mysteriously from her

life 18 years ago. One day she saw his picture online.

This is a book about identity theft but it is identity theft taken to

the ultimate extreme, they don't just steal your identity but they

steal you. I started with online dating and cat fishing. This is when

someone goes online and pretends they are someone else. I could take

your pictures of a website and pretend I was you and invent a whole

new identity. That is cat fishing and I want to explore this new world

of online dating. I combined all of these things together. You also have

all the other things we associate with modern technology like Facebook

and social media. Your character uses Google and has all of this made

the life of a thriller writer more difficult because we are all sleuths

now. We all do our own detective work. As it made your life more

difficult or easy? It is new challenges. When the telephone was

invented that was new for a book as well. In old television you would

see phones not being answered but that is unrealistic now. Everyone

has a cellphone so if you are going on a date you are going to Google

the guy you are going out with and that is the world we live in. My

books have to represent that. There are new challenges but also new

possibilities. This book, like a lot of yours, revolves around family

secrets and family dynamics. There is a dark secret in your protracted

list's family. What was your own family life like? Are their dark

secrets in yours? There is a quote that says your normal life should be

regular so you can be violent and original in your work. I had an

average normal suburban childhood and maybe that is how I am getting

it all out. These books depend on their success of propulsive plot

that is full of twists. How far, when you start writing, do you know

whether twists are and where you are writing. Thriller writers cannot

make it up as you go along. Both. I know the beginning and the end. I

compare it to driving through her `` New Jersey to California. There is a

direct route or I might go and stop in Tokyo but I will always end up in

LA. One of my favourite quotes on writing is that writing is like

driving at night in the fog with just your headlights. You can only

see a little bit in front of you but you can make the whole journey that

way. There is a twist in almost the last page. I did that twist from the

very start. It surprised me, I should have seen it coming but

everything in between is negotiable. Yes. Pretty much. There

are a few stops I know I will make along the way when I'm travelling

along the road but I may skip them. I know some of the aspects but the

last few twists I know ahead. I want to fool you once and fully twice but

in the very last page of this book there is one more. Readers, do not

turn to the last page! A lot of thriller writers start out with the

ideas, the twists and turns, not of `` lots of thriller writers seek to

do you what you do but few enjoy your success. There is a litre of

maybe a dozen that enjoyed the kind of sales you have but `` what is it

you do that the vast majority of thriller writers cannot? That is

tough. Because of the speed of the plot there are things you may not

notice until later. This seems with women who are wives of cops and

older and grown`up, it seems like something simple but I think it is

heart. It is hard to talk about your own work like this. The key is that

you care about the characters and there are moments in the book, any

time I write a moment that feels like something I have seen in a

thriller I change it. I need the heart and soul and the moments when

these women are talking about how hard their lives have been because

of too many pregnancies they have had or just a small little moment

like that. A lot of people can maybe build the car but you have to have

the gasoline to make it run. That is the heart and soul. You need the

moments of humour and you need to care about the characters. You will

care about a character called cat and another character called Dayna

in this book and that makes the difference. When you wrote your

breakthrough book it was filmed in France in French and it was a great

success. So far none of your films have been made by a Hollywood studio

although there are a few in development, why is that? Dialogue

is an important part of your books. I have no idea. Part of it is luck.

Hollywood is a very strange Treacher and right `` a very strange

creature. Right now Mickey Bolitar is being made with Hugh Jackman and

Missing You is being made by an Australian company. Next year I

could be talking to you and have three but this year I have none. It

is a crazy thing. Our day missing a trick? Someone as popular and

successful should be meat and drink. When a Tell No One became such a big

French movie and did so well and it actually came over here and did well

people thought it would be a breakthrough. It is a very

unpredictable creature. I am doing a TV series in France and working on

doing a TV series here in the UK. I really do not love that world and it

is one I would like to stay away from so we will see what happens. I

am afraid they will damage them. Tell No One worked as a movie

because the director understood it was similar to Missing You and some

of my others, it is a love story first and a thriller second.

Hollywood always wants to sacrifice the heart for some more action

sequences. Thank you very much indeed.

Thank you. Hello. Spells of spring sunshine

across much of the UK today. There will be for a few more days. The

forecast this weekend is to stay dry and bright. Some rain will dribble

South on Saturday. By day it will be miles but by night it will be

chilly. That is the same for