'Tragedy is a cruel teacher': Harlan Coben on how death of his parents made him a better writer

A loss-filled decade in his 20s – including the “traumatic” death of his parents – improved best-selling crime author Harlan Coben’s writing.

“I had quite a bit of tragedy in my 20s,” Coben reflects in this week’s Big Issue, which goes on sale today (6 January). “Things moved along fairly smoothly until then, I led a fairly normal American suburban life, but I did something like seven eulogies that decade. My dad died, my mom died and a lot of people in my life died.

“So that probably also shaped me. Tragedy is a very cruel but effective teacher. I think that helped push me and made my writing better.”

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Coben’s father died of a heart attack at the age of 59 in 1988. “My father’s death is still the most traumatic,” he says. “Maybe because it was the first one. It came out of nowhere.” Coben previously wrote about his dad’s shock passing just three days before his college graduation in a moving piece for New York Times in 2003.

“I’ve come to the conclusion with grief that it’s like you lose a limb, right? You lost your arm. You can learn to go on without that arm, you’re going to learn to do things with the other arm and still have a happy, productive life. But that arm’s not growing back.”

Eight of Coben’s novels have now been developed into TV series. The latest adaptation, Missing You, premiered on Netflix on New Year’s Day.

“I still get excited about my books being adapted for television,” Coben tells the Big Issue. “The most exciting part is always the first day, when I look around and there are maybe 200 people putting this together. I think, wow, I had this little idea, this little ‘what if ?’ in my house in New Jersey and now all these people are bringing it to life.

“But part of doing an adaptation is letting go. Like, for Missing You, I created Kat Donovan – but [actor] Rosalind Eleazar is going to take her in a different direction. That’s really fun. When Netflix pushes a button, it will be in 230 million households in 190 countries.

“This is not my first time, but that still jazzes me. I hope it always does.”

Read the full interview with Harlan Coben in this week’s Big Issue, out now.

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