I Will Find You review: Harlan Coben's latest fast-paced, throwaway Netflix thriller

Netflix really, really likes Harlan Coben. Having signed up to produce 14 projects based on the work of the master of the airport page-turner back in 2018, and then inked a second deal in 2022 to make even more, the streamer has been slapping us furiously with Coben after Coben ever since. I Will Find You is the 12th of the original 14, but it does feel a bit like the millionth.

If you’ve tried a few of the Netflix Cobens and not liked them, however, don’t discount this one too swiftly. First, the novel only came out in 2023 and, as he was writing it, Coben was collaborating with the TV showrunner, Robert Hull, so this isn’t a book that’s been snipped and squished to fit on a small screen. For UK audiences, meanwhile, it also helps that I Will Find You isn’t set in Britain.

Most of the Cobflix sagas to date have been British-based, with the likes of Michelle Keegan (Fool Me Once), Siobhan Finneran (The Stranger) and Cush Jumbo (Stay Close) serving time as middle-class people having their lives shattered by a terrible secret, which leads to a long and twisty story that almost always features Richard Armitage looking faintly bilious.

It’s not that our fine British actors are too good for this disposable material – that would be awfully snobbish, so we’re definitely, definitely not saying that – but some of the previous series haven’t quite known if they’re pure plot or are meant to include some quality character drama. They haven’t been sure what they are.

I Will Find You takes place in the US, the spiritual home of plotty pulp, and it knows damn well that it’s a straight-forward conspiracy thriller. Sam Worthington is David Burroughs, a man in jail for bludgeoning his own young son to death five years ago. He maintains his innocence, a claim supported by his journalist sister-in-law Rachel (Britt Lower of Severance fame).

When she finds evidence that the boy is somehow alive, that classic Coben impossible revelation sets David an almost impossible challenge: to work out who framed him and find his missing boy, having escaped a prison full of villains who are part of the plot against him.

Can he find the truth before you notice how silly the story is and stop watching? I Will Find You moves fast enough for that moment never to come. David and Rachel go on the run, evading the FBI and trying to second-guess the bad guys, while the folks back home gradually kick into gear to help.

One of the moving parts is always spinning off to somewhere new and, at the halfway point when you think you might have it sussed, an episode begins with the caption “Geneva, Switzerland, Five Years Ago,” and it’s all a mystery again. The revelation that one character is another’s parent is used not once, but twice. Almost everyone’s allegiance either changes, or seems to change, or changes and then changes back, as the story roars on. Every single minor character ends up being shot. It’s a ride.

Worthington is a little too passive and downbeat as a man who’s meant to be an unstoppable avenger – he’s going for haunted anguish, but at one point I thought he was about to fall asleep in the back of a car. Lower does better as a nervy, fidgety nerd who steps up when needed, while the latent MVPs are Chi McBride and Dear White People’s Logan Browning as verbally sparring FBI partners with amusingly diverse ages, temperaments and heights. They could and should reappear in a spin-off series.

I Will Find You ends, in the best traditions of the throwaway thriller, with a last twist that doesn’t make sense when you stop and think about it – if you want to stop and think, Harlan Coben is not your guy. On home turf, however, he knows what he’s doing.

I Will Find You is now streaming on Netflix.

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