My Favourite Holiday: Author Karin Slaughter couldn’t stop taking notes in divine Venice

KARIN SLAUGHTER is one of the world’s most popular authors.

She has sold more than 35m copies of her best-selling books.

Her latest, The Good Daughter (HarperCollins, £20), is out on Thursday.

It’s about a girl whose memories of losing her mum are triggered by a horrific crime decades later, while she is working as a lawyer.

Karen lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her partner.

I HAVE a lot of books at home but I always go in the bookstore when I’m in an airport – and not just to see if my book is there!

I like to watch what people pick up. Everyone turns it over first to look at what it says on the back and some will read the first page.

I always find it eye-opening about what makes someone finally buy a book. I really do think it’s just a lottery.

One of the most amazing things about being a writer is the places in the world I’ve seen.

My work has taken me to Dubai and New Zealand and Singapore and so much of Europe. I’m so grateful that a part of my life is seeing these amazing places.

Italy is one place I’d never been to on tour, until recently when I visited Milan.

But one of my most memorable holidays was to Florence, Bologna and Venice.

A boat picked us up at the airport and took us into Venice and, while I’m sure everybody has this experience, we felt like we were in a James Bond movie.

Suddenly we saw Venice and it was just extraordinary.

We thought we’d only stay a couple of days and it’d be smelly and full of fat tourists but it was the best part of the trip.

It was so beautiful.

My favourite part, because I travel so much, is always picking the hotel. We stayed at the Aman which had amazing service.

If you took some cashews from the mini-bar, by the time you’d looked at the canal from the balcony they’d been magically re-filled.

And when we had a tour, the guide was so passionate about her city. I love that.

The thing about being a writer is that you never switch off.

I was always taking notes for The Good Daughter because I knew one of the characters would be well-travelled.

And, like me, she’d really focus in on the hotels.