The Girl on the Train

The Girl on the Train is a psychological thriller by the British writer Paula Hawkins, published in 2015. It is her first thriller, and it was adapted into a film in 2016.

Rachel takes the same commuter train twice a day and has come to know the houses it passes, especially the one where a couple she has never met eat breakfast on their deck. She has given them names and a whole idea of their lives, which seem better than hers since her marriage ended.

Rachel drinks, and her memory of the nights around the time she travels is unreliable. One morning she sees something from the train that she cannot explain away, and when she tries to take it to the police she finds herself drawn inside the case rather than watching it from the outside.

The novel is told in the first person by three women, so the reader has to weigh each account against the others, and none of them is complete. It is set in a commuter town outside London, where the day is shaped by the train timetable, and it is a standalone novel.