I felt far more at home with murder than I had with love
Paula Hawkins found fame with The Girl On The Train, which was made into a hit film starring Emily Blunt. But she had spent years writing romantic novels before turning to thrillers.
“I started out writing fiction a slightly strange way, in that I was commissioned to write a romantic comedy: the publishers gave me an idea and a broad outline and I filled in the rest. I then wrote three other romantic novels under the same pseudonym, but I never truly felt at home in the genre.
“I’m not romantic and I’m not that funny... The novels kept getting darker and darker and it became clear to me that what I really wanted to do was write crime. As soon as I started writing The Girl On The Train it became clear to me I’d found my niche; I felt much more at home with murder than I had with love.” years. Are they better? I believe so, because you become a better writer as you get older.”
The covers of Adele Parks’ earlier books including her first, Playing Away, featured soft pink or purple backgrounds, with often a pair of sexy legs in stilettos in the fore. And now she’s become a star of the domestic noir, her thrillers frequently making the top 10 bestseller list.
She says her thrillers have been more successful than her romantic fiction, that her previous readers have stuck with her, and that she’s opened up her market to men, plus the American market has been bigger.
“I like the fun of playing with bad guys and girls, and enjoying the stretch of looking at a very different dark underbelly of the world I didn’t get to access when I was writing romances,” she says.
She had already taken a break from romantic fiction to write two historical novels before turning to thriller-writing. “I became less interested in pinning my books around a romance.”
She intends to continue with thrillers for the foreseeable future. “I just like the twists, the reveals and the intellectual play you can have in a thriller.”