The bestselling author is a self-made New Jersey boy who now rules Netflix. He talks about his friend Dan Brown and meeting Queen Camilla. Summer has finally arrived in New York.
The weather is hot and sticky as I reach the Dakota, opposite Central Park. The spires and turrets of the neogothic apartment block, where John Lennon used to live, give it the air of a haunted mansion. I am early, but tell security I have an appointment with Harlan Coben and am ushered through the black, wrought-iron gates.
Suddenly Coben shoots past in T-shirt and sneakers, with his Havanese dogs, Winslow and Lazlo, in tow, hoping for a quick stroll in Central Park before our interview. They are small, while he is tall and muscular, as befits a former college basketball player. So is his recurring character Myron Bolitar, a sports agent and former basketball pro from New Jersey who solves crimes.
“Join me,” Coben says, smiling warmly, and we cross into Strawberry Fields. He could not have scripted our meeting better. Someone is singing Imagine in the distance.
Dave, a former hippie who organises the buskers’ strict, one-hour time slots, says, “Hi Harlan,” and they fist-bump. A violent, climactic scene in Think Twice , his new Myron Bolitar mystery, unfolds in this very spot. Coben shows me the tree near the memorial to Lennon where a person in his novel gets shot.
We return to find Dave scribbling in a yellow notepad. On Coben’s advice he is writing his memoirs. “Just think of the mos.
