A Case Study of Nuances of Victimology in Coben’s Fool Me Once: Novel and Adaptation

Abstract

This research aims to extrapolate tangents of the process that ascribe meaning to the noun victim and how it transmutes into a verb – understanding victimology as a term through the story of Maya in Harlan Coben’s novel and its television adaptation by employing qualitative analysis as research methodology. It seeks to delineate identity alteration caused by trauma, to discern gender as a parameter in victimization and coping and to trace secondary victimization across minor characters. This study reveals that Coben’s narrative has portrayed the metamorphic cycle of trauma, reflecting its evolution from victimhood into moral insurgency. It is a multidisciplinary initiative in understanding the literariness of modern television adaptations. Deeper nuances of psychological turmoil come to light as the characters of the said corpus build themselves around a typically piquant Coben plot: rich in turbulence, existential dread and a class struggle, Fool Me Once (2016; 2024) is a textured tale of psychic morbidity and its resultant criminal deviance whose merit lies in aligning literary analysis with applied social insight, revealing how crime fiction echoes real world dynamics of victimization.