Gone Girl

"The two big ones of the last 15 years are Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train . Gone Girl came out first and it influenced a whole generation of writers in the UK. What particularly appealed to me is what we talked about earlier. SPOILER ALERT It’s one of the best examples of bold writing with two unreliable narrators. That’s really good. You’ve got the split point of view, and you’ve got two time zones. Nick and Amy are married, and the first half is written as her diary from previously. Nick is in present time and he’s trying to work out where his wife has gone. The diary entries are sufficiently disturbing to make us think that he’s disposed of Amy, and that’s how the police begin to think. This has influenced so many of my books. I often do multiple points of view, sometimes two, sometimes three. In No Place to Hide , I’ve done a first-person diary, and a third person in the past. In my first book, Find Me I also had a diary which turned out to be unreliable. What’s interesting about Gone Girl is that everything is unreliable. I really like that. The other thing I liked in Gone Girl was the authenticity of Nick’s male voice. I thought that was particularly well done. I thought Nick was incredibly convincing as a character. It gave me the confidence to not worry about writing male or female characters because you’re dealing with people, ultimately. There’s no reason why a man can’t write in a female character and vice versa, but it is potentially going to get more contentious as an issue, whose stories we’re allowed to tell. Yes, I know what you mean. Still, the overall feeling I had when I finished the book outweighed any misgivings. Endings are hard. The other thing that stands out for me in Gone Girl is the writing. It is a thriller and you’ll probably pass it on to someone, but she’s a good writer. The style, her use of words is really smart. It’s a cut above. I read it at a time when I was devouring all these books before I started writing psychological thrillers. I was looking at all the best ones. In The Girl on the Train, you have three points of view, you’re moving the camera around. That’s something which I’ve always done. No Place to Hide is the first one I’ve done with just one point of view, although it’s past and present. Usually, I have three characters telling the story. I’ve moved away from police procedure as well. No Place to Hide is just a standalone, psychological thriller without any police in it at all. There is no washed-up, drunken and divorced detective. I often get accused of rushing endings, so now I pace myself. I allow myself enough time. I start the ending earlier so I’ve got enough energy to write it properly and can give it a big bang. Have you been to the Minack theatre in Cornwall? It’s a really, really dramatic cliff-front theater. It’s quite extraordinary. I thought, if I can’t end a book there, with a literal cliffhanger…"