WHEN Hampshire writer Alison Waines called her psychological thriller Girl on a Train, she had no idea that the book would become the subject of mistaken identity, which would propel her to the top of international best seller lists.

Alison, who writes as A.J. Waines, thought it was an interesting co-incidence when, two years after her book was published, another novel with a similar title began to garner a lot of attention.

"When The Girl on the Train came out, it didn't occur to me that it would have any impact on my book," says the author from Hamble.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, which was published in 2015, was made into a hit film, starring Emily Blunt.

Emily Blunt in The Girl on The Train

"My book already had a presence and I didn't think that it would have any effect on my sales. But suddenly, my sales shot up to a multi six figure number!

"Reactions were mixed. Lots of people liked my book. Some complained, because they thought they'd bought the other book and felt misled, but it wasn't intentional, as mine was out first.

"My novel shot to number one in the best sellers list in the UK and Australia a number of times, and I was selling 1,000 copies a day."

The mix-up even made it to the pages of the Wall Street Journal, after a journalist's mother mistakenly bought Alison's novel for her reading group.

"She enjoyed it but when they were discussing the plot, she realised that it wasn't tallying," says Alison.

Fortunately for Alison, who now has a publishing deal, Girl on a Train was self-published, meaning that she took a much larger percentage of the profits, and earned a six-figure salary.

The mix-up also helped to raise her profile as an author, although she was already making a name for herself in her own right; one of her subsequent novels, No Longer Safe, sold 30,000 copies in the first month.

Alison Waines

Alison has published a string of psychological thrillers, drawing on her experiences as a psychotherapist, working with, amongst others, murderers, gang members and psychopaths.

Her latest book, Perfect Bones, was published on Thursday, and features a clinical psychologist, Dr Samantha Willerby, who is trying to help the police to find a killer.

The only witness to the crime is an artist, who has been rendered mute through post traumatic stress, and Dr Willerby uses techniques to help draw him out that Alison used in her own practice, including placing objects in a tray of sand.

"I've drawn on my work as a therapist," says Alison.

"I hope it gives authenticity to the feel of it. It's a who-done-it page-turner."

As an author, Alison is now on her third career: she was a professional cellist before training as a psychotherapist.

"My mother had a lifetime of depression, and as you grow older, you think about whether you can help someone, even if it isn't that person," she says.

One of her jobs saw her working with women coming out of secure psychiatric hospitals, such as Broadmoor, who were living in a half-way house, helping them to reintegrate into the community and avoid reoffending.

"The women often had psychosis and delusions; some were psychopaths. They weren't necessarily people who had committed crimes for greed or malice.

"It was fascinating. My lasting impression was of feeling sad. Often the women came from untenable situations, with domestic violence or drug abuse.

"Often they were looking for a sense of belonging or had committed a crime because they wanted to keep a partner. One woman had killed someone because she wanted to stand by her boyfriend!"

Alison used a variety of ways to help to connect to the women and encourage them to open up, including drawings and tv programmes.

"One day, one of the women was watching a cartoon with animals in it and I said lightly 'if you were an animal, what would you be?'

"She said she'd be a shark because of her big teeth, and leered at me but I stayed with it and asked her about where the shark was and what its future was. She said that she was scared and felt hunted. Eventually, she was talking about how she wanted to have a baby, but was afraid that social services would take it away from her. We were then able to talk about how she could make sure that didn't happen.

"I had to be careful not to say the wrong thing and close it down. It was very exhilarating and rewarding."

Alison, who draws on many of the people she met whilst working as a psychotherapist in her fiction, says that one of the most memorable women she met was someone she calls 'Gloria'.

"I met this woman who was well-dressed, calm and seemed completely normal," she says.

"You could imagine chatting to her if you were sat next to her on a bus.

"When I met her, she was clutching a teddy that she'd bought to give to her daughter when she left the safe house.

"It turned out that she had killed two men by strangling them. There was nothing sinister about her. She had no odd body language or tics, nothing to indicate that you would need to be wary of her. That was the most disturbing thing.

"She was terribly disturbed and dangerous, but didn't show it at all, which was shocking.

"It made me think about what I could have said to her if I had met her in a coffee shop that would have put me in danger."

Many of Alison's experiences have informed her writing.

"I often write about women as killers," she says.

"I tend not to involve gore or violence, but focus on the interior world – what drives people. You see these closed women and wonder what it is that they are holding on to that they don't want you to see."

Alison had two self-help books published during her time as a psychotherapist, but began writing fiction ten years ago.

"I felt burnt out," she says.

"I'd always kept a journal but I started writing a short story, and it got longer and longer and became a whole book, and I got a top agent from that.

"I love words. Therapy involves a lot of images, metaphors and ways of describing things to understand someone better.

"There is a huge cross-over between psychotherapy and fiction. Psychotherapy is all about inviting the person to tell their story. I let it all filter through to these stories. No one is recognisable in my fiction but I've drawn on my experiences of people who have done terrible things but also made mistakes and had traumas.

"I've used those experiences to create gripping fiction – hopefully!"

And hopefully it won't be long before Alison is topping the best seller lists again, this time without the help of a bit of mistaken identity.

* Perfect Bones by A.J. Waines, the third book in the Dr Samantha Willerby Mystery series, published by Bloodhound books, is out now.