{"id":506427,"date":"2026-06-18T17:09:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T17:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/506427\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T17:09:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T17:09:12","slug":"i-will-find-you-review-harlan-coben-deploys-new-highs-of-absurdity-with-typical-ruthlessness-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/506427\/","title":{"rendered":"I Will Find You review: Harlan Coben deploys new highs of absurdity with typical ruthlessness \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harlan Coben and Netflix<\/a> break new ground with their latest collaboration \u2013 a thriller set in the ever-expanding Coben-verse, which somehow manages to star neither James Nesbitt<\/a> nor Richard Armitage<\/a>. A twist indeed.<\/p>\n

In other respects, I Will Find You (from Thursday, Netflix) sticks ruthlessly to the Coben<\/a> formula as deployed across 12 previous adaptations \u2013 a genre we shall hereafter refer to as \u201cNetflix and Thrill\u201d. David Burroughs (Sam Worthington) is a middle-aged white man in over his head and hotly pursued by nefarious baddies as he hunts for the missing son he is wrongly accused of killing. Every episode ends on a cliffhanger \u2013 to the point where the true cliffhanger would be the lack of a cliffhanger.<\/p>\n

It also stays on brand by being completely ludicrous. As viewers of previous Coben capers such as Run Away<\/a> (starring Nesbitt as a middle-aged white man in over his head) or The Stranger (starring Armitage as a middle-aged white man in over his head) will recall, Coben adores an absurd plot \u2013 and that\u2019s what we get here, cranked up to eye-watering levels of preposterous. <\/p>\n

So there it is: Coben\u2019s traditional box of tricks deployed with his usual ruthlessness. The one departure is that the setting is Coben\u2019s native USA (specifically deepest Maine) rather than Greater Manchester, the prosaic sandbox where earlier Netflix collabs have been filmed.<\/p>\n

Worthington does well as a loving father wrongly convicted for his child\u2019s murder. He is rotting in prison when his sister-in-law Rachel (Severance<\/a>\u2019s Britt Lower) visits with a random photograph taken by a friend at an amusement park. There in the background is a child who is a dead ringer for his supposed dead child (down to the distinctive birthmark).<\/p>\n

David is understandably keen to clear his name. But he is up against a web of complicity that has the power to reach into the prison and put his life in jeopardy (this is referred to in the biz as \u201cgoing the full Coben\u201d). As if that wasn\u2019t enough to worry about, he also has to deal with the FBI, who are on his tail, believing him a murderer on the loose rather than an innocent father looking for his child. Then there is his estranged wife Cheryl (Erin Richards) \u2013 furious with Rachel for helping David and determined to move on from the trauma of losing a child.<\/p>\n

Worthington soars satisfyingly over the top as a frustrated everyman in the tradition of other Coben heroes, and the series reels the viewer in as it sprints from plot point to plot point. All of this will be a red rag to Coben haters who accuse him of bashing out formulaic, wildly implausible whodunits where twist is piled upon twist, with little regard for plot holes or character consistency.<\/p>\n

Coben\u2019s defence is that he is all about tales of immersion \u2013 the roller-coaster ride that takes you away from the predictable drudgery of day-to-day life, or the even more predictable drudgery of the RT\u00c9 World Cup panel. That same energy crackles through I Will Find You \u2013 a romp that adheres rigidly to the Coben blueprint and is all the richer for its willingness to be silly and its refusal to be boring. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Harlan Coben and Netflix break new ground with their latest collaboration \u2013 a thriller set in the ever-expanding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,39034,61,60,111451,1868,216459],"class_list":["post-506427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-harlan-coben","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-james-nesbitt","tag-netflix","tag-richard-armitage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}