Just when fans thought I Will Find You had wrapped up every loose end, the bestselling author revealed there’s one corner of the story he still can’t stop thinking about. 👀 The twist? The characters he wants to build a spinoff around aren’t the ones most viewers would expect—and his choice changes the way fans may look at the entire series.

Harlan Coben knows how to continue the story of I Will Find You.

The bestselling author spoke with PEOPLE about the TV adaptation of his 2023 novel, and what could happen next for the characters.

The thriller follows David (Sam Worthington) after he escapes prison in an attempt to search for his son Matthew, whom David allegedly killed five years earlier. That is, until he is visited by his former sister-in-law, Rachel (Britt Lower), who may have insight into Matthew’s whereabouts. After escaping prison, David works to find his son while proving his innocence to those around him, including his family.

Coben, who also serves as an executive producer, explains the difficulty of creating the intricate inner worlds of each character and their doubts about David, all while dropping hints that reveal David’s innocence in each episode.

“Which one are you gonna reveal first that doesn’t necessarily set all the dominoes off too quickly?” he explains. “Each person has to make sense in their own way. Each has to have their own story.”

Coben says adapting the novel allowed him to explore some characters’ motivations even further, saying, “One of the surprising characters in the book, his father Lenny doesn’t do very much, and here he does quite a bit,” he says.

Lenny (Hugh Thompson) is a former Boston Police Department detective. He notably has a close friendship with Philip Mackenzie (Peter Outerbridge), the warden at the Briggs Penitentiary, to which David is sentenced.

“I wouldn’t mind spinning him off to find out. I’d like to see Phillip and Lenny as younger cops on the beat of Revere, Massachusetts,” he says.

“That’s what you wanna do,” he notes. “You try to make each character their own story. It’s a tapestry. You have to try to weave it all in.”

He adds that the realities of adapting a novel for the small screen come with their own difficulties: “It’s a lot of back and forth. A lot of trial and error.”

“One of the ways I try to do it is to focus on each character, one at a time,” he says.

“A lot of it is just Robbie calling me and me calling Robbie, and writing the script,” he says of his working relationship with showrunner Robert Hull. “It’s ugly. I say this about a novel, but it’s true of a TV show too.”

“A novel is like a sausage. You might like the final taste. You don’t wanna see how it was made,” he adds.

This process isn’t unusual for Coben. Thirteen of his novels have been adapted for the screen, including Hold Tight, Run Away, Fool Me Once and Safe.

I Will Find You is now streaming on Netflix.