Three o’clock in the morning. His favour­ite time of day. The sky was dark, the streets deserted. Most people were asleep. Like the woman in the bedroom down the hall. He wondered if she was dreaming and smiled at the realization that her nightmare was just about to begin. He laughed, careful not to make a sound. No point waking her up before he’d decided the best way to proceed… Except he did have a plan, he thought, stretching his arms above his head and taking a moment to admire the leanness of his torso, the hardness of his biceps beneath his short-sleeved black T-shirt. He’d always taken great pains with his appearance, and now, at thirty-two, he was in better shape than he’d ever been. Prison will do that for you…— MAD RIVER ROAD

Bookless in the Bahamas last year, I came across my first Joy Fielding thriller, Mad River Road, in the hotel tuck shop. It looked like standard beach-holiday fare—a hokey page-turner from some pseudonymous scribe. But reading the author’s bio, I discovered that Fielding was from Toronto. Why had I never heard of her?

Later—much later, as I struggled to put down the damn book—I found myself cursing my discovery. I had lost an evening bingeing on Fielding’s clean, punchy prose, reading about a gullible woman falling for, and road-tripping with, the wrong man. Not unsuitable wrong. Really wrong: lying, beating, raping, serial-killing wrong.

Since then, I’ve downed six more Fieldings—as quick, intoxicating and chilling as so many vodka shots. Joy Fielding is Canadian fiction’s uncrowned queen, our leading publishing export. Within her genre, she’s in the same league as the masters, the likes of Ruth Rendell and Stephen King. The books aren’t high art: the words are ordinary, the settings bland, the characters—apart from the heroines, who tend to have complicated, if predictable, personal histories—shallow. But anyone who can make you say “Sorry, not tonight, I need to find out what happens” is someone who has mastered storytelling. “I know how to make you turn pages,” Fielding will tell me, with childlike delight. “You can’t always feel the strings being pulled, but trust me, they are, until—gotcha!”

Impeccably manicured and coiffed, Fielding lounges, shoeless, on her taupe sofa in a sun-flooded room with floor-to-ceiling windows, seeming more than a little Jackie Collins fabulous. “Just toss those pillows on the floor,” she advises. We’re sitting in the living room of her Forest Hill home. There are fresh-cut flowers, a limited-edition Joan Miró over the fireplace, a crystal writers’ award on the grand piano. Don’t even think of getting out of the house without food or drink. Initially, I decline the offers of coffee, tea, water, a sandwich, but she’s relentless.

Slowly I realize it’s not only her success that separates her from other writers. Fielding bucks the stereotype of the anti-social, feckless, unkempt, hypersensitive writer. She’s dependable, disciplined, a deadline-meeting pro. Not overly refined (even, sometimes, a little vulgar), she’s sociable, well put-together. And she goes about the business of writing like it’s, well, business.

Doing things her own way has brought her much success. A blown-up copy of the cover of one of her German editions sits near the fireplace, a testament to her massive success in that country. (A translation of her 1991 thriller, See Jane Run, topped the best-seller list there, and she’s sometimes had as many as three books listed simultaneously.) But it’s not only there that Fielding is big: at least eight of her 19 books have made the New York Times best-seller list. Maybe more. She’s not sure. (She’s always cagey when asked about total sales, as is her agent. Since she’s been with so many publishers, it’s hard to estimate a figure, but it’s probably over 20 million copies.)