Master of suspense Harlan Coben’s first foray into teen fiction has been freeing and fun, but not at all simple.
Harlen Coben, photo/Corbis
Viewpoint: when suspense novelist Harlan Coben decided to write Shelter – his first young adult novel after 20 adult thrillers that have scooped awards, topped bestseller lists, and sold tens of millions of copies around the world – he made only one major change to his storytelling approach. “It’s from the viewpoint of a 15-year-old, rather than a 30- to 40-year-old,” says the New Jersey native. “Other than that, I really changed nothing, which was intentional. One of my goals was to give a truly suspense-thriller kind of experience to young adults, but not dumb it down at all.”
Shelter is certainly not dumbed down. It may centre on a group of high-school kids, but it contains plenty of the twist-filled storylines, intriguing casts of characters, wry humour and thematic touches (old secrets, loss, redemption) that have made Coben’s long-running series starring sports agent cum investigator Myron Bolitar, and his standalone thrillers, so popular with readers and critics. “I often find the best way to write is to sort of ignore whatever the normal rules are,” says Coben, who intentionally didn’t immerse himself in teen fiction. “I did tell my editor: ‘If I’m going too far, pull me back’, or whatever else when the book was done (which she didn’t), but other than that I wanted to write the same kind of suspense thriller I write for adults, just from the viewpoint of a 15-year-old.”
Shelter centres on Mickey Bolitar, who comes to live with his estranged uncle Myron after several family tragedies. Early struggles at a new school are alleviated by a new girlfriend, Ashley, and unexpected new friends, goth-girl Ema and quirky “Spoon”. But then Ashley vanishes without a trace, and Mickey – who’s lost so much already – takes it upon himself to try to find her, even when the trail takes him into a seedy underworld and conspiracy that suggests Ashley wasn’t who she appeared to be.
It was during the planning of Live Wire, Coben’s tenth and latest Myron Bolitar tale (published earlier this year), that the idea of writing a young adult story starring Mickey – introduced to readers in that novel – started fermenting, for several reasons.
As a father of four, Coben had “wanted to do something” for his kids who, like many teenagers, were already reading his adult novels. “Which I’m not entirely sure was appropriate,” he says with a chuckle. He dismissed the idea of writing a Myron prequel featuring the basketballer turned sports agent as a teen. “I don’t like it when you go back, you change history.” Coben also wanted to explore certain things in such a novel that wouldn’t work with Myron, who’d “had a pretty happy childhood” (Mickey, on the other hand, doesn’t).
The idea of teen fiction was also intriguing, says Coben, because he enjoys “exploring new worlds” in his writing, and there are certain different things he could do. “There can be a larger mythology, sort of a little bit of an X-Files or Lost touch to it. Not supernatural, but something else bigger going on that I’m not sure I could get away with in adult novels.”
Coben doesn’t hugely enjoy the writing process. “I’m from the school of thought that says I don’t like writing, I like having written.” However, he has particularly enjoyed creating the new world for his new characters in Shelter, and is very happy with how the book turned out. “There was just something more freeing about writing a young adult book, and I can’t really put my finger on why,” he says. “There was just something freeing and childlike about this form, and it may have made it a stronger novel.” Coben confirms that Shelter is the first tale in an ongoing series starring Mickey and his friends (the next book is scheduled for September 2012). “Creating Ema and Spoon and the high school they go to, and
Rachel, and Mickey’s world, was for me the part I really enjoyed the most; having these new people to hang out with. I did not want it to be ‘Myron Bolitar-lite’, so I think these people are as compelling and interesting in their own way as Myron and Winn and Esperanza and Big Cindy.
“That’s really my hope.”
Coben has written about Myron Bolitar since the early 1990s, so “one of the fun things” was taking a fresh look at his popular hero through the eyes of a disgruntled 15-year-old. “Mickey doesn’t like Myron, and it’s an interesting perspective.
Everyone else in Myron’s life thinks he’s pretty wonderful. And the things that people think are wonderful Mickey finds annoying – ‘he’s so emotional, he gives me that look, he always wants to talk’. I think that will be an interesting tension throughout the series, where Myron, for now anyway, is put in the role of the bumbling uncle, the adult the kid wants to avoid so we can have a book. So all of this, while keeping Myron what he is, I thought would be interesting for Myron readers, and for me. I thought it would be more realistic, in that his nephew wouldn’t necessarily fall under the Myron spell right away.”
Coben has always found such personal tensions interesting. “Family is always compelling,” he says. “It’s the one constant that we all have. It’s the thing that’s in all of us, or most of us. It’s the thing I feel most passionately about. If I asked you ‘would you kill somebody?’, you’d say no. But would you kill to save your child? The answer is automatically yes. So where is that line? Where does that passion lie? It’s something I always like to explore. It’s one of the reasons that instead of always doing murder – which I rarely do – I mostly do ‘missing’, because with missing there’s hope.
“And hope can be the most wonderful thing in the world, but it also can crush your heart like an eggshell. And I find that compelling.”
SHELTER, by Harlen Coben (Indigo, $24.99).
CRIME WRITERS GO YOUNG
Elizabeth George, photo/Getty Images
Harlan Coben is not the only big-name crime writer to venture into young adult fiction in recent times. Since mid 2010, his fellow New York Times bestsellers Kathy Reichs, John Grisham, Elizabeth George, and David Baldacci have all either released debut teen thrillers, or indicated that they’re in the process of writing one. Last year, lawyer turned thriller writer Grisham, who has sold more than 250 million books, released Theodore Boone (Hodder, $24.99), the story of a 13-year-old wannabe attorney, who finds himself unwittingly caught up in the biggest murder trial his small town has seen when he stumbles across new evidence. A sequel, Theodore Boone: The Abduction (H&S Fiction, $29.99), was released in June. Grisham has said he hopes to entertain and interest younger readers, but at the same time “inform them, in a subtle way, about law”. Grisham’s teen fiction is noticeably simpler and somewhat straightforward when it comes to plot and character, although it does provide younger readers a good introduction to the workings of the legal system.
Virals (Young Arrow Fiction, $32.99), published in New Zealand earlier this year, is the first in Reichs’s new series starring Tory Brennan, great-niece of forensic anthropologist Temperance. Tory and her teenage friends rescue a dog being used for medical testing, and become infected by a virus that enhances their senses and reflexes. They then use their new abilities to tackle a cold-case murder. “I think kids are really going to like seeing kids doing forensic science,” said Reichs in USA Today.
George, author of the Inspector Lynley series, is working on The Edge of Nowhere (due for a 2012 release), which will be focused on a mother and 14-year-old daughter on the run from the father who used the daughter’s psychic talent for hearing “whispers” to make money. In addition, prolific crime writer James Patterson, who has sold more than 220 million books worldwide, has for many years also penned science fiction and fantasy-themed teen novels for his Maximum Ride, Daniel X, and Witch and Wizard series.