Netflix’s I Will Find You is ‘one of the best Harlan Coben thrillers so far’

Like him or loathe him, Harlan Coben has helped to make some of the most entertaining thrillers ever made.

And a group that clearly loves Coben is the bosses at Netflix. Since 2018, they’ve released a whopping 13 adaptations of the author’s hit novels.

And the streaming service doesn’t seem to be slowing down yet.

On June 18, they dropped an adaptation of his 2023 novel I Will Find You.

The show follows David Burroughs (Sam Worthington), a man wasting away in prison after being falsely accused of murdering his son.

When new evidence emerges, however, that suggests his son may still be alive, David breaks out to uncover the truth. Will he find his missing son? Well, you’ll have to watch to find out.

And one person who thinks you should really watch and find out is actor Tom Morton.

‘I think it’s right up there with the best of his work,’ Morton told Metro before adding that those who’ve read the book should tune in as well.

‘I think it is worth noting, it’s one of his more recent books, he explained. ‘It was only released in 2023, but for those of your readers who have read the book, they still don’t know the story.’

Indeed, one major change is what got Morton, 44, his role in the series.

He plays Detective Daniel Müller, a Geneva-based investigator who enters the story when he realises David’s case is connected to a historic Swiss crime.

Unlike other characters in the story, however, Müller isn’t from the book; he was created specifically for the show.

‘Daniel Müller isn’t in the book,’ he laughed. ‘I found out at my own expense, because when I got cast in this. I was told I was going to be playing Daniel Muller.

‘I thought, “Great, I’m going to fly to Canada, and I’ll read the book on the flight.”

‘So I sat there, reading, and I’m going, “Oh, he’s gonna turn up.. It’s gonna be soon… No, he’s not in it.”‘

Morton’s convinced, though, that this is one of the show’s strengths. Neither Coben nor showrunner Robert Hull felt bound by the book.

‘I think even for people who’ve read the book, it’s gonna be a voyage of discovery,’ he explained.

‘No matter how many times you think you’ve worked things out, you’re going to end up going “Wait, what, wait what?”

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This is gonna double down and hit you twice as hard, because every single episode twists and turns the whole way through. And just when you think you know what’s happened, you don’t.

And if you think Morton was intimidated by Müller being a TV invention, you’d be wrong.

‘It really was quite liberating,’ he began.

‘No one’s expecting anything one way or the other, and it was a character that Harlan and Robert Hull, the showrunner, just kind of pulled out of thin air and threw into the mix.’

It helps, of course, that despite being ‘new’, the character still has that ineffable Coben charm.

‘There’s something to Daniel’s story which I found eminently relatable,’ Morton explained.

‘But again, this is one of those things that I think is at the heart of the wayHarlan writes, and it’s the reason that people keep coming back to these adaptations and why they top the Netflix charts.

‘He writes characters who are in extraordinary circumstances, but are deeply relatable, and that means people project themselves very easily into those universes.’

It helped as well that Hull had a vision for the Müller.

‘I think what’s fair to say is that Robert had a pretty clear idea of what he wanted Daniel to be, the actor said.

‘At the same time, he and the directors were very willing to let me put stuff out there and see what stuck.’

Sadly, one thing that didn’t stick was Morton’s suggestion that Müller should have more hirsute.

‘The only thing I disagreed with is I really felt that he should have had a moustache,’ Morton laughed.

‘But there was a notion that this might have pushed him into Poirot territory. So, there we go. We stepped away from the tash.’

I Will Find You is streaming now on Netflix.

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