"Wherever I Go" owes its success to Harlan Coben Everything about the new Netflix thriller, starring Sam Worthington, Britt Lower and Milo Ventimiglia

If there's one name behind the success of Netflix series, it's this: Harlan Coben. Earlier this year the adaptation of his novel Run Away reached number one on the platform, and the same happened with the new adaptation I Will Find You, starring Sam Worthington, Britt Lower and Milo Ventimiglia. Coben is an author with 80 million copies sold, with books translated into more than forty languages around the world.

The Coben mine

The writer struck a first deal with the platform in 2018 for fourteen adaptations, later renewed in 2022 with a new package of entertainment products that nonetheless hints that the upcoming titles could be many more than those initially agreed upon.

A gold mine that Netflix can't help but exploit down to the last resource, with Coben who, deep down, enjoys being squeezed dry. It's part of his working process: having begun his career as a writer in the Nineties, the novelist sets himself the goal of publishing at least one novel a year. This means spending entire days sitting at his desk writing, whether in his New York apartment or in some café or library.

Apparently his writing method already follows the structures of serialization: according to what Coben himself has stated, behind the narrative of a new title there often already lies a framework that paves the way for a possible adaptation for the small screen. Netflix must have understood this well, which is why it has drawn on his pool of nearly forty published titles, turning some of them into its own productions. Shows that win over audiences even when there are no big names accompanying them. A genre that plays in a league of its own and wins every time.

Familiar faces, an even more familiar author

In I Will Find You the star system also played a role in the series' fortunes. Worthington is the iconic face of the Avatar saga, Lower is among the most acclaimed performers in today's serial drama thanks to Severance. Ventimiglia is a name that, perhaps even more than the other two, manages to win over a cross-generational audience that recognizes his star status, to which he is tied above all by two titles that were very popular in his career, Gilmore Girls and This Is Us.

It's remarkable, however, how despite a recognizable cast, Harlan Coben still remains the greatest draw for viewers. They may not even know that behind the show hides the man who kept them glued to the streaming window one title after another, feeling inexplicably driven toward yet another sensationalist thriller that shoots to the top of Netflix's charts. A Coben Universe, as it's been dubbed, that more or less always follows the same line when it comes to characters and plot, which this time focuses on a sudden death that turns into a disappearance and a desperate search.

Five years later, a photo

David Burroughs (Worthington) is serving a prison sentence for killing his young son Matthew five years earlier. The family man of course pleads his innocence, but there's nothing he can do to make his words credible. Until one day his sister-in-law Rachel (Lower) shows up at the prison with a photo: Matthew could be still alive and she has proof. After an escape plan and on the run from the police, David will do everything to prove his innocence, but above all to find the son who vanished years before.

Thanks to the constant plot twists and reversals upon reversals that make I Will Find You a complex and heartfelt case, the Netflix plus Coben combo once again offers audiences an intricate investigation, to be followed more for its excesses than for the careful storytelling reserved for viewers. Everyday logic is bent by the protagonists' schemes. At the center of the show lies the ordinariness of an ordinary man's life, caught up in an intrigue more convoluted than he could ever have imagined