'The Girl on the Train' is a runaway hit

Jocelyn McClurg | USA TODAY





The Girl on the Train, a debut psychological thriller from the UK, has roared out of the station to emerge as the first publishing blockbuster of 2015.

Released on Jan. 13 and buzzed about as the next Gone Girl, Paula Hawkins' twisty, Hitchcockian novel, told by three unreliable female narrators (one a drunk) and featuring a buried body, is No. 2 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list.

It's breathing down the neck of top-seller American Sniper, Chris Kyle's 2012 memoir boosted by the hit movie. In recent days Train has held the same heady No. 2 spot on amazon.com.

It's a remarkable performance by an unknown writer who might as well be a stranger on a Train to most American readers.

"Are we surprised? Absolutely. It's incredibly unusual to have a new author debut so high on all these (best-seller) lists," says Sarah McGrath, editor in chief of publisher Riverhead.

Train has been optioned for a movie by DreamWorks, and Stephen King tweeted a thumb's-up Monday at the ghostly hour of 4:05 a.m.: "Really great suspense novel. Kept me up most of the night. The alcoholic narrator is dead perfect."

Riverhead thought early on it had a winner in Train, packaging the advance galley copy in a special "train window slipcase" and getting it into the hands of booksellers, critics and regular readers through giveaways on GoodReads, Amazon Vine and other platforms.

"It's a very propulsive read," McGrath says. "When I first fell in love with this book and started sharing it in the office, it spread like wildfire. I was seeing people reading it under the table at meetings."

"The girl on the train" is Rachel, a lonely, divorced alcoholic who passes her old neighborhood on the way to London and sees something that draws her into a possible murder investigation. Throw in her ex-husband, his new wife, a bickering neighboring couple, booze-induced blackouts and multiple versions of the truth, and the Gone Girl comparisons start flying. ("Fans of Gone Girl, this one's for you," Carol Fitzgerald of bookreporter.com told her readers last fall.)

"I loved Gone Girl," McGrath says. "But this is a very different book that stands on its own, not a copycat in any way."

Valid or not, it's a comparison that doesn't hurt.

"I've had many books presented as 'the next Gone Girl' and this is the one that has come closest," says Sessalee Hensley, the influential buyer for Barnes & Noble who says she was hooked on The Girl on the Train from the first page.

Riverhead doesn't release sales figures, but the hardcover is in its 10th printing with more than 300,000 copies in print. (The e-book is outselling the more expensive print edition, according to data from USA TODAY's best-seller list.)

Booksellers have embraced the book: It's an Indie Next pick of independent booksellers, one of Amazon's best books of January and a Discover Great New Writers title for Barnes & Noble.

Critics have climbed onboard too, although with a few reservations. USA TODAY gave the book 3 out of 4 stars. ("Train takes a while to get rolling, but once it does, hang on tight. You'll be surprised by what horrors lurk around the bend.")

Hawkins, 42, lives in London and wrote three earlier "women's fiction" titles under the pseudonym Amy Silver. This is her first book to be published in the USA, and she's about to arrive here for a book tour. She's working on a new psychological thriller.

"She is just over the moon, a little stunned," McGrath says of Hawkins' reaction to her novel's success. (Hawkins was not available for an interview.)

And this Train shows no signs of derailing.

How big could it be? "It's tracking like the early days of Gone Girl so that's what I am hoping for," says Barnes & Noble's Hensley.