Coben spoke on the phone last week from his home in New Jersey, describing his ever-evolving relationship with TV and why so many second seasons aren’t just unnecessary; they’re also unfair. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

What do you enjoy about working in television?

I think my new book, “The Boy from the Woods,” is my 31st or 32nd novel, and that’s a lot of time alone in a room. [Laughs.] So to get the chance to collaborate with people I respect and like has been joyful. Maybe I would not have been nearly as interested in doing this 15 or 20 years ago. But I was lucky to have a very positive experience when I did [the 2006 French film] “Tell No One” with Guillaume Canet, where they kept me involved and I didn’t experience the nightmare stories you hear about Hollywood.

Are those stories part of why your books have been adapted so much outside of the United States? Was it just easier outside of Hollywood?

When I optioned “Tell No One” with France, people thought I was nuts. But I knew I had a much better chance of getting a good film made by Guillaume. And because I like changes, to me it’s interesting to move the story’s location a bit, to have a hybrid of an American sensibility and a European sensibility. I think it’s worked for us.

Can you talk a bit about those changes — the ones you make in your adaptations? The title character in “The Stranger,” for example, is a white man in the book, but on Netflix she’s a biracial woman.

Part of it was, when we started to audition people, the men just weren’t working. It didn’t look or feel right. Once I saw Hannah do it, there was no one else for me. She has the right touch of being a little cool, a little damaged, really interesting and mysterious. She’s a great actress, and with Richard in that very first scene, they just worked.