Paula Hawkins

Hear from a masterful new voice in suspense, as Paula Hawkins recounts the twists and turns of her journey to ‘overnight success’, and dissects our insatiable interest in elegantly-crafted and emotionally-nuanced literary thrillers. In conversation with Hilary Harper.

It was the book every commuter seemed to have in their hands in 2015. A tautly written psychological thriller with lashings of Hitchcock and Agatha Christie, Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train explored society’s voyeuristic impulses, alcoholism and the disconcerting unreliability of memory.

Even more riveting than The Girl on the Train, though, is the story of how it came into being. A debut novel that becomes an international bestseller and is quickly optioned by Hollywood? It seems like every writer’s dream – but according to Hawkins, it wasn’t nearly that straightforward. The Girl on the Train ‘was a last roll of the dice for me as a fiction writer’, she’s admitted.