In Netflix’s latest Polish-language production The Woods , the main characters try to solve a mystery from the past involving the discovery of only two bodies after four young people went missing at a summer camp. Shortly before its premiere on 12th June, Harlan Coben, author of the source novel and one of the producers of the show, told me about how he works on his books, and how he enjoys the adaptations of his works made in various countries by various writers and directors.
A pandemic seems like a dry season for a crime story. In Miami, for the first time since the 1950s, no homicides had been recorded in the seven weeks since the lockdown was imposed.
I didn’t know that. That’s good news. People are off the streets, it’s hard to say what has been going on among them. The pandemic was the number one story for a few months, now it has been overshadowed by the protests after George Floyd’s death. We are living in very interesting times.
But is it good news for a crime writer?
Obviously, if there’s less people out in the streets, the crime rate goes down. What does that mean for me as a writer? I don’t know. And I don’t care. I’m happy when there’s less crime. Will I ever write a book about the pandemic? I don’t know that either. We shall see how the current situation pans out. Usually, I write contemporary novels that take place in the here and now. I was finishing a novel when this pandemic first hit. So I decided on some rewrites and set that book in 2019. Otherwise, there would have been too many changes to be made to do with social distancing and stuff like that. My books and TV shows, for example The Woods, took place in a world before the coronavirus. I don’t know how the pandemic – or the recent protests – are going to affect the way we all write. My guess is they will change it somehow, but I can’t yet anticipate any specific details. I haven’t started working on anything new yet. When 9/11 happened, I thought I wouldn’t necessarily write about 9/11, but it was still there, on every page. Sometimes I need a little bit of distance to do such things.
In your books, you don’t just focus on the events or the whole whodunit aspect. You also write about how the situation changes the people involved. This is also the case with The Woods.
The Woods actually dealt with the same race issues that we are facing today. It
