“We just got Albania!” trills Shari Lapena, Canada’s very own queen of domestic suspense.

She’s talking about the many different languages her books have been translated into – she reckons about 41 – as we take in her bookshelves via the magic of FaceTime. So many different covers via so many countries.

The very latest? A special anniversary edition of her 2016 breakout novel, The Couple Next Door – complete with punky, sprayed edges and deluxe foil cover.

Asked about the decade milestone, the Toronto author confirms that she hasn’t reread the book, which wound up selling four million copies worldwide and rocketing to the No.1 spot in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. “A lot of writers don’t,” she adds. “They don’t look back! Though it has been fun to look back at everything that has happened in the last 10 years. It’s been quite a thrill ride. It was such a shock when that book took off, and it’s just built ever since.”

Her life, in so many words: pre-The Couple Next Door and post-The Couple Next Door.

She sold it very quickly; she also recalls. A matter of days. And a 10-year edition now? Tremendously rare for a thriller, or really, any book. “It was a very nice gesture,” she says of her publishers.

“The Couple Next Door flew more than any subsequent book,” she admits. A departure, too, from the two comedic novels the one-time lawyer had written previously – critically received but “niche” in terms of sales. There was just something about this one, though born from a simple premise: what happens when a couple stupidly leaves their baby at home to go to have dinner with the couple on the other side of their semi-detached home? One unwise decision that sets off a whole matrix of consequences. (Inspired, in part, by the Madeleine McCann case in 2007.) Also, she says: “It was the easiest book to write because … no pressure.”

Taking a wider lens, I asked if she’s noticed a change in how books are marketed, or discovered, in these 10 years. #BookTok, for instance, was not yet a thing back then. Twitter, much bigger. “One of the differences between then and now,” she says, “is the expectation of writers being online and available.” 

Another thing that’s changed: the shifting tastes of readers. The bestseller lists are full of “romantasy,” for one. When Lapena came along, she was riding the wave of the Gone Girl suspense craze, which led to a glut of similarly themed books. “I was fortunate to establish myself when I did.”

All this book talk only whetted our appetites some for more, leading us to dive into Lapena’s own shelf life …

What’s the best book you’ve read this year?

Five by Ilona Bannister. It’s coming out in May, I think. I read it early. She’s a former lawyer, and this is a counting-down-clock kind of story. There are five people on a train platform – Victoria Station in London – and the reader knows, as the clock ticks down, that one of them is going to die. It looks back with various timelines, and you do not know who the victim will be. It stood out to me.

What book can’t you wait to dive into?

I just got the new book from [Irish crime novelist] Andrea Mara, Such a Nice Girl.

What’s your favourite book of all time?

That’s hard. If I had to pick one, I think I would go with Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins [the companion piece to Atkinson’s bestseller Life After Life]. It’s such a fine, fine book.

What book completely changed your perspective?

I’m going to go with Black Beauty. I was very young, and it was the first time that I read a book from an animal’s point of view – it made me realize how amazing point of view is. Even then! I remember thinking: it’s great that you could see something in an animal’s perspective.

If you could have dinner with any author, living or dead, who would it be?

Agatha Christie. Because I think she would be good fun! And also, what the hell happened with her disappearance [the author mysteriously vanished for 11 days in 1926]? Inquiring minds want to know.