Did Harlan Corben basically write the same book twice? Are all popular thrillers from the 21st century essentially the same book?

Recently I read “Tell No One” and it was extremely mediocre but that’s not what this post is about. I just saw a trailer for a Netflix movie adaptation of his other book “Fool Me Once” which I’d not heard of before.Within the first few seconds of the video, the summary of the premise sounded very similar to Tell No One so I thought it might be a looser adaptation with the protagonist being female rather than male. But no, apparently this is an entirely separate novel written 15 years later.

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You don’t have to have read the books to see what I’m getting at here, this is the summary for Fool Me Once (2016):

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Former special ops pilot Maya, home from the war, sees an unthinkable image captured by her nanny cam while she is at work: her two-year-old daughter playing with Maya’s husband, Joe—who had been brutally murdered two weeks earlier. The provocative question at the heart of the mystery: Can you believe everything you see with your own eyes, even when you desperately want to? To find the answer, Maya must finally come to terms with deep secrets and deceit in her own past before she can face the unbelievable truth about her husband—and herself.

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I was going to include the summary used everywhere for Tell No One but none of them include a very important point for the purpose of this post. So here’s my modified summary after having read the book:

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David and Elizabeth Beck, are celebrating the anniversary of their first kiss at a secluded lake when Elizabeth is abducted and later murdered. On the eighth anniversary of Elizabeth’s death, David receives a shocking email from an unidentified source linking him to a live stream of an unrecognizable street corner where a woman resembling his long-dead wife appears on screen before vanishing. Shocked by what he’s seen, David goes on a quest to find out if this is Elizabeth or if he’s being fooled. And, if it is his late wife, how is she alive? Where is she? Why is she hiding? David investigates the truth of the murder he still thinks about every day, hoping what should be impossible may be true.

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Honestly, reusing the same plot points is not exactly surprising for authors known for cranking out a large volume of thrillers (James Patterson for example) but seeing the ad for the adaptation and seemingly no one pointing this out made me think I was crazy!

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Really the other reason I wanted to post about this is because I’m getting real sick and tired of the books being recommended to me via The Algorithm. Why is every fucking book basically Gone Girl? They’re all clearly written with hopes of being turned into a Hulu or Netflix movie/series and a lot of them actually are!

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Let me know if you’ve heard this one before: Someone has gone missing/been murdered/is in a coma, their spouse/sibling/child is certain the police are missing something, the protagonist then discovers a hint/secret that makes them think their loved one is still alive/hiding for their safety/knows who caused their accident leading to coma. The protagonist must go on a mission to save their loved one which leads them to unravel truths about the past of the person they thought they knew.

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Here’s a list of books I’ve read in 2022/2023 that were all “critically acclaimed” and followed the exact pattern I just described:Imposter by Bradeigh Godfrey, My Murder by Katie Williams, The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave, Thought I Knew You by Kate Moretti, The Good Girl by Mary Kubica

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And I only read a lot of those because the synopsis made it seem slightly more unique than the other dozens of books Goodreads/Book Tok recommends me. It’s like every book on a “mysteries you won’t be able to put down” list, especially if they were written in the streaming era, has a summary containing one or more of the following phrases:

“But there’s something she/he doesn’t know”

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“Secrets are revealed that lead him/her to believe there’s something the police are missing”

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“He/she must unravel the mystery”

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“His/her past contains secrets about the person he/she thought they knew”

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“He/she must first come to terms with the truth in order to save him/her”

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“Shocking twists and turns make this book impossible to put down”

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Listen, I’m one to talk about formulaic novels, the author I’ve read the most is Jodi Picoult. Say what you will about the structure and beats of every one of her books but at least the premise is different. There’s often a court case involving an interesting moral question which is why I enjoy her books so much. They are very similar in style but actually unique in overall story. I can’t say the same for a lot of these “if you liked Gone Girl and Big Little Lies, you’ll love this page-turning thriller” novels.

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How many books have y’all read that follow the rule:

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If the husband is seemingly perfect, he’s the one who did it. If the husband seems suspicious, he’s a red herring and the real culprit is someone who the protagonist believed was helping her.

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I guess it’d be a lot easier to find new books if I was a fan of romcoms with illustrations of the characters on the cover. Or fantasy novels which require you to learn the vast lore of family trees, a magical world, some societal system including a long list of terms specific to the book, different creatures and their positions in said society, the back story of the kingdom, etc.

by trumanburbank98