WHEN Gone, Girl was published in 2012, a shake-up of the literary trend of airport thrillers took place. Here was a smart, pacey whodunnit written for the yummy mummy crowd. The existing market of thrillers featured hard-bitten anti-heroes by the likes of Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, and Patricia Cornwall, and were most likely to be picked up by passing travellers familiar with those authors’ excellent work. But Gillian Flynn’s book wasn’t ever on the “Crime” table in your local bookshop, it was usually in the Bestseller or Fiction section. And there – ker-ching – it made all the difference. Unsullied by the notion that this was your father’s paperback, sales of Gone, Girl all but obliterated other mass-market releases, and were being snapped up in their multitudes.

Falling into this publisher’s dream is Paula Hawkins, a former financial journalist, and her debut novel The Girl on The Train. Set in London, Oxfordshire, and a train travelling the distance in between, it tells the sad story of Rachel, a frumpy, woebegone, drunk who is trying to come to terms with her ex-husband’s re-marriage. She spends her days commuting into London, fortified by vodka, and seeing the world go by. When she spots an attractive couple, the Hipwells, in a house near the tracks, she becomes obsessed with what she imagines is their perfect life. But Rachel being a rather messy character, she becomes entangled in the Hipwell’s marriage, and suddenly finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation when Megan Hipwell goes missing.

Hawkins uses that great literary device, the unreliable narrator, and we see events unfolding through Rachel’s drunken eyes. There’s always a question hanging over Rachel, about whether she can be trusted, and not just because her back teeth are well under. It’s what she doesn’t remember that is key to what happened to Megan Hipwell.

It’s no surprise that The Girl on the Train filled the void for readers yearning for more Gone, Girl reading. Publishers saw dollar signs, and Hollywood came knocking. The film version, released on Wednesday, is directed by Tate Taylor (The Help) and is written by erotic novelist and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson. Wilson wrote the screenplay for the Atom Egoyan thriller Chloe, which saw Julianne Moore deal with a sexually manipulative Amanda Seyfried, and that carnality is given a central role The Girl on the Train. Starring Emily Blunt as Rachel (blotched up and bloated for the role, but also due to being pregnant whilst filming,) Justin Theroux as her ex-husband Tom, Luke Evans as Scott Hipwell, Haley Bennett as Megan Hipwell, and Laura Prepon as Rachel’s put-upon flatmate. The action has moved to New York City, something Taylor defends as the screenwriter’s choice. “The city is barely represented – the story is in the minds of the characters.” Rachel remains a Brit, a choice that Taylor explains adds to her isolation. Studying Bergman and Hitchcock, Taylor wanted the film to have a feeling of noir, and be “occasionally creepy.” The moodiness of the film, the drabness of the weather, helps achieve this.

The dark subject matter isn’t restricted to a missing woman, however. There are over-running themes of fertility, and disappointments with personal relationships. Rachel is unable to have children with Tom, and resents his remarriage and subsequent fatherhood. Blunt, who had her second child with husband John Krasinski in July, said she understood this aspect of Rachel. She stressed that motherhood and issues with childlessness marked women in a way that those not familiar with these struggles might not understand.

“We all need to be much kinder to each other. Women are judgmental to each other, particularly in domestic areas. They are made to feel defensive about their decisions on family life – to each their own.” She went on: “My job as a working mother is no harder than anyone else’s,” something which resonated when she admitted to all assembled to lactating when hearing a baby cry.

Blunt says that whilst, thankfully, she never identified with Rachel, she “had to understand her."

"The main intention was not to make Rachel liable but to make her credible.” This goes to the heart of Hawkins’ story: none of the characters in The Girl on the Train are exactly charming. When Haley Bennett was cast as Megan, she was told that she was exactly right for the character, something she found was “a terrible thing to say!” Asked how he dealt with Scott’s reactions in the film, Evans admitted that he’d “probably handle things in the same way.” A rather alarming admission, if an honest one, as anyone who’s read the book will attest.

But as director Taylor says: “The characters are compelling, and figuring them out is just as important as figuring out what happened.”

Girl on the Train is in cinemas from Wednesday