New Year's Day featured the latest in a string of Harlan Coben projects for actor Richard Armitage, who plays Sergeant Ellis Stagger in the five-part Netflix adaptation of the author's 2014 novel Missing You.

Prior to his apparent allegiance to Coben's suspenseful creations, the Englishman was known to TV fiends as Guy of Gisborne in the BBC One drama Robin Hood and as Lucas North in Spooks. This was prior to swinging his sword as Thorin Oakenshield in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy.

Armitage subsequently found himself in the part of Francis Dolarhyde, a serial murderer named The Tooth Fairy, opposite Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy in the psychological horror series Hannibal.

Jump to 2020 and his first taste of Coben arrived in the form of The Stranger.

In this eight-episode series, which premiered via Netflix to an 83% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Armitage played Adam. He is the husband of Dervla Kirwan's Corinne Price, who disappears when she learns that he's discovered a dark truth from her past.

The Stranger marked the first of Netflix's contracted forays into Coben's back catalogue, having drawn up a deal with him in 2018 to bring 14 of his stories into development for the screen.

Just one year later, Armitage re-teamed with the power couple (Netflix and Coben) for their Stay Close adaptation, co-starring Cush Jumbo, James Nesbitt, Sarah Parish and Eddie Izzard.

On playing the photographer Ray Levine, Armitage told RadioTimes of his excitement: "When the opportunity came to do another one with the same team, same writer – different cast, obviously – it was a no brainer. I said 'yes' immediately and then started reading the book, and just thought, 'here we go again'. It's a complete page-turner."

Such was Armitage and Coben's bond, the former interviewed the latter to promote the audiobook version of his Myron Bolitar novel Win in 2021 too.

Whilst discussing the Netflix adaptation procedure - Coben executive produces each of his stories brought to the screen - he revealed: "I go into it, 'What is the best TV series we can make?', if it's true to the book, great. If it's not true to the book, also great. So I move my stories to various countries, we've changed characters around, we've changed motivations. Because they're two very different mediums. They should not be the same."

Weighing in on that sentiment, Armitage opened up on what he enjoys about Coben's methods.

"One thing that I really appreciated about working with you was having read your books, sometimes you'll pass by a character that is useful to the narrative that you're telling, but when that comes to be developed for TV or film you'll take a bit more time to investigate that character, and you're very open to treading those paths, which makes for a very kind of dense narrative with the screenwriter," he said.

Further into their conversation, the actor lauded the writer's signature style.

"Obviously I haven't read your entire canon but there's a signature, or a theme that you love to play on which is this idea that the people you know aren't telling you everything about themselves," Armitage told him.

"In our modern world, with technology, we have this sort of ability to sort of lead multiple lives of truths or lies. And it's something which I think we immediately recognise. 'Cause I think we're living that, that reality, and it's a theme that I really enjoy about your writing."

Next came the 2024 thriller Fool Me Once, co-starring Michelle Keegan, Adeel Akhtar, Joanna Lumley and Emmett J. Scanlan.

When Armitage's character Joe Burkett is killed, his wife Maya is handed a nanny cam by a friend to keep watch over her daughter, but when Joe suddenly reappears in the live footage, she must piece together the horrifying case's connection to another.

Speaking to Virgin Radio's Angela Scanlan recently, Armitage once again waxed lyrical about the master storyteller.

"What he's doing in his drama, in his books and the adaptations, is he's got his finger on the pulse of something very current. I always say Harlan's signature is this fingerprint that we leave behind in terms of our technology that we're using," he told the presenter.

Which brings us to his fourth Coben collaboration: January 2025's Missing You.

"I think they call it a poker. When you score four goals in football, isn't it? It's a poker or a haul," Armitage said to RadioTimes last summer. "What keeps me coming back is I'm always very flattered and honoured when I'm asked back. And then you read that first episode and you're just saying, 'I can't not do this.'

"They're sort of irresistible to be on the inside. But also knowing that Netflix has created such a loyal fan base for Harlan Coben, he's almost his own cinematic universe," he continued.

Missing You follows detective Kat Donovan, played by Slow Horses actress Rosalind Eleazar, who discovers her fiancé on a dating app profile more than a decade after he went missing.

Four adaptations down, 10 more to go.

Missing You is available to watch on Netflix from New Year's Day 2025.