Thriller author Harlan Coben, whose Tell No One was a big hit earlier this year, enjoyed a very large payday last week when Dutton president Carole Baron topped a couple of other seven-figure offers with an even higher one, closer to eight, to take his next three books. Lisa Erbach Vance at the Aaron Priest agency made the sale, along with Priest himself, for North American hard/soft rights (paperback for NAL). The next book up, set for 2003, will probably be another stand-alone title, like Tell No One, but at least one of them is likely to be a vehicle for Coben's popular series character Myron Bolitar. Meanwhile, there's one more book to go in Coben's contract with Bantam Dell.