The man behind thrillers like Tell No One, The Woods, Nobody's Fool and TV series like Fool Me Once and Missing You chatted with PEOPLE in advance of his new book that he co-wrote with Academy Award-winner Reese Witherspoon, Gone Before Goodbye and likened one part of his writing process to the famed masked vigilante.

While we can't say whether Coben fights actual crime after closing his laptop for the night, the writer did use the crime-fighter to explain a crucial part of his process. When asked whether he starts writing with one of his famed characters in mind or starts with a page-turning story idea, he explained that in his mind, they're really one and the same.

"I think one of the mistakes that people who are trying to write make is to try to differentiate between them," he explains. A story is character, character is story."

"You know Spiderman or Batman, right? If I tell you Batman's origin story, you probably know that his parents were killed by a robber and Spiderman's one is that he was bitten by a spider, but then his uncle Ben was killed because he let a bad guy get away because of his ego involved."

"Now, both of those stories: is that a story?" he asks. "Or is that a character description? I don't normally separate. I normally start with some sort of scenario or situation."

In his latest thriller, Army combat surgeon Maggie McCabe is on the edge -- but not the way she likes it. After a devastating series of tragedies gets her medical license revoked, Maggie is without purpose, but not without passion. When she's thrown a lifeline by a former colleague, an elite plastic surgeon with demanding (and deeply discrete) anonymous clientele, she finds herself in over her scalpel.

Maggie suddenly finds herself in "his realm of unspeakable opulence," but when her patient suddenly disappears while under her care, she has to go on the run -- or else.

Already aching to find out what happens next? That's just how Coben, and his co-writer Witherspoon, want readers to feel. "I hope it's the book you take to bed at 10 or 11 o'clock at night, say 'I'm only gonna read for 15 minutes,' and it's 4 in the morning," Coben says.