How Different Is ‘Tracker’ From the Books?
Tracker’s Colter Shaw is making waves across the country, with Justin Hartley proving himself to be network television’s biggest star right now. But if you’ve been watching Tracker from the beginning, you’ve probably noticed the “based on Jeffery Deaver’s The Never Game” tag in every episode’s opening scene. In fact, Tracker was originally titled The Never Game, after the novel, before CBS changed the title. Yes, Tracker is based on a book, but how close is it to the source material?
From the get-go, the biggest difference between the Tracker show and Jeffery Deaver’s Colter Shaw series is the storytelling. Unlike other popular book-to-screen adaptations like Prime Video’s Reacher or Paramount+’s Joe Pickett (based on the novel by Lee Child and C.J. Box), Tracker takes Colter Shaw in a completely new direction. Yes, he’s still the main character in the series—a lone survivor, collecting rewards across the country—but the stories themselves are more like a traditional TV show than your average Colter Shaw novel.
Tracker, on the other hand, takes Colter through more than a dozen different adventures, all of which are resolved in a more timely fashion than what you’d read in the series. Deaver’s The Never Game and other books like it are a bit more complex than the average CBS series episode. On the other hand, Deaver’s novels, like Captivated and The Second Hostage, feel more like Tracker because they’re short. There are currently four Colter Shaw novels, with a fifth titled South of Nowhere slated to hit shelves in May 2025, and four mediums.
Even if some of the episodes share similarities with a few of the books—like Season 1’s “Missoula,” which borrows plot elements from The Goodbye Man—the series’ distinct one-and-done procedural formula sets it apart from Deaver’s 400-page thrillers. That’s not to say the show is inferior to the books, just that Deaver’s material is a bit more thorough, as the books follow Colter on a mission.
Additionally, the Colter Shaw we meet in the TV series is a bit more charismatic and approachable than the Colter Shaw in the books. Like other horror movie protagonists before him, like John Rambo, Jack Reacher, and James Reece, The Never Game’s Colter Shaw is more of a strong, silent type. His solitary survivalism really shines through in the novels, to the point where Deaver even describes him early on as “a man who rarely smiles.” Like the movie, Colter lives on the road, although his home is a Winnebago from The Never Game, not an Airstream like in the movie.
But perhaps the biggest difference in Tracker’s depiction of Colter Shaw is how his process unfolds. In the book, Colter constantly uses the skills his father, Ashton Shaw (Lee Tergesen), taught him to analyze every situation (his “never” rule), often thinking or talking about the uncertain. Of course, we see this sometimes in the movie, when Colter rattles off percentages and survival odds. But the way it’s done in the book is much more introspective, speaking to both Colter’s special abilities and his never-ending struggle to trust others.
Fans of Tracker may wonder if they’d recognize all the characters from the movie if they read a Colter Shaw novel. Well, most of the time. In addition to Colter himself, his handlers Teddy and Velma Bruin also appear in the novels, but they are slightly different from how they are portrayed in the series. Teddy is described as a tall, overweight, tattooed veteran with red hair and ruddy skin, but unlike the television character played by Robin Weigert (written as Teddi in the show), this Teddy Bruin is male. Conversely, Velma is described as looking a bit more like Weigert than Abby McEnany, the actress who played her in Tracker.
