Fame & Fortune: Author Harlan Coben
He sleeps well by keeping you up nights
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While his readers stay up nights glued to the pages
of his latest Adrenalin-charged thriller, Harlan Coben sleeps like
a baby knowing that his mastery of the hook-and-twist suspense tale
provides financial security for his wife and four children.
The New Jersey native, once the "enforcer"
on the Amherst College basketball team, was drifting toward law
school when the urge to write novels hit him during his senior year.
His grandfather, knowing that a law practice would likely nip Coben's
writing in the bud, suggested instead that the graduate take over
his travel club business. For eight years, Coben honed his writing
between booking tours to Italy and Spain.
In 1995 Coben published "Deal Breaker,"
the first in his suspense series featuring Myron Bolitar, Boston
Celtics basketball-star-turned-sports-agent who solves crimes with
the help of a blueblooded sociopath sidekick, Win Lockwood III,
and ex-female wrestler gals Friday Esperanza and Big Cindi. Critical
praise and sales grew apace as Coben became the first author to
win the trifecta of mystery accolades: the Anthony (for "Deal
Breaker"), Edgar ("Fade Away") and Shamus ("Drop
Shot") awards.
Then, in 2001, Coben broke from the series and onto
the best-seller lists for the first time with his first stand-alone
thriller, "Tell No One." The film version, starring Kristin
Scott Thomas ("The English Patient," "Gosford Park"),
will be released in French with English subtitles in fall 2006.
The breakthrough officially placed Coben on the mystery
writer's A-list, alongside writers and pals Michael Connelly, Dennis
Lehane and George Pelecanos. Former President Clinton is a fan,
as is Knicks coach Larry Brown.
Coben's novels peel the veneer from northern New Jersey
suburbia to reveal dark truths about the human condition in millennial
America. But that's all fodder for his fiction. In reality, Coben
and his pediatrician wife Dr. Anne Armstrong-Coben have been happily
married for two decades, and their 140-year-old Ridgewood, N.J.,
Victorian is alive with the comings and goings of four young children
(the oldest is 12) and two dogs.
Bankrate dropped a dime on Coben to see if success
has removed some of the thrills from his financial life.
Bankrate: You grew up
in New Jersey. What was your family like?
Harlan Coben: Middle class,
I would say. I was born in Newark and grew up in a town called Livingston,
one of three kids. My dad worked for a company and was also a lawyer,
and my mom had different jobs over the years. They both had a great
interest in reading. Our Saturday entertainment was, we would all
drive into New York and go to one of the big bookstore-sale annexes,
and you could buy all the books you could stick in a bag for $5,
and we would spend all day there. We weren't allowed to spend money
on toys and that kind of thing, but we were always allowed to buy
whatever books we wanted to; there was never any limit on it. I
didn't take advantage of it, but there was never any limit. That
was how I was raised, to a true appreciation of stories. I never
had an interest in nonfiction, always stories.
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