“I get a call at home saying, ‘Is this Harlan Coben?’” he reminisces fondly. “I say, ‘Yes, who is it? and he says, ‘Nils Lofgren. We’re back playing in New Jersey, do you want to come one of the shows? We’ll give you a seat upfront, bring you backstage and you can meet everybody.’ I was freaking out ‘cause I’d grown up with Springsteen. Little did I know it would lead to really close friendships with Nils, Max Weinberg and Bruce’s manager John Landau.”
Coben also tells us about being at college with Dan Brown (“The funny thing is that neither of us were really writing at Amherst”); his other flatmate David Foster Wallace (“Great guy whose death was beyond tragic”); The Sopranos (the Bada Bing, which is actually the Satin Dolls – don’t ask me how I know that! – is within three or four miles of my house) and the aforementioned Mr. King (“If you’re trying to think, ‘Who’s the Dickens of our era’ it’s probably Stephen King; (a guy that’s popular but also doing some good stuff”).
And that’s just the tip of the literary iceberg!