Mystery

The Woman in the Window

Jeannette Hartman

June 11, 2021

By A. J. Finn

Anna Fox believes she has seen her neighbor across the park being stabbed to death.

But the police don’t believe Anna.

Perhaps it was the empty bottles of merlot on her coffee table with the array of prescription pills spilled around them. Or maybe it’s the fact that all members of the Russell family are accounted for and visible when the police check.

The only problem is that the woman — Jane Russell, who claims to be Alistair’s wife and Ethan’s mother — isn’t the same woman who introduced herself as Ethan’s mother on Halloween. That woman had helped Anna chase away teens egging her house and stayed for a couple of bottles of wine.

Once a successful child and adolescent psychologist, Anna’s life has been turned upside down by agoraphobia. She hasn’t left her Harlem townhome in 10 months. Now she’s being gaslighted. But by whom? And why? There are plenty of possibilities from the tenant in her basement apartment with a criminal record to the Russells to an ill-intending stranger.

Her terrors only grow when she receives a photo of herself sleeping from a strange and unfamiliar e-mail address. This time the police suggest that in her loneliness, she’s creating drama for the sake of attention. Anna knows she’s in danger.

Author A. J. Finn has put together a spell-binding psychological thriller. Despite her drinking and self-medication, it’s easy to like Anna and worry about her safety. Hints of a tragic trauma are dropped subtly as the story unfolds. The more the reader understands about Anna’s past, the more credible she becomes. Her isolation and vulnerability intensify the danger that she is in.

This story is all the easier to identify with after the past year’s isolation from the Covid-19 pandemic and our increasing reliance on the internet.

A movie, starring Amy Adams and Gary Oldman, based on the book is due out on Netflix on May 14, 2021. I, for one, can hardly wait to see it.

About the Author: A. J. Finn (1979 – )

A. J. Finn is the pseudonym of Daniel Mallory, an American editor and author.

THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (2018) debuted at the top of the New York Times Best Seller list.

He wrote his novel while living in New York and working as a vice president and executive editor at publisher William Morrow and Company. Prior to that, he had worked for several years in London at Sphere Books, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company.

A February 2019 New Yorker article accused Mallory of making up aspects of his life and career, including having earned a doctorate from the University of Oxford, having suffered from cancer and a brain tumor, having lost his mother to cancer and his brother to suicide. He was also accused of borrowing heavily from the 1995 thriller film “Copycat” for his novel. He later released a statement admitting that his mother had survived her cancer and his brother was still alive. He has attributed his deceptive behavior to having bipolar disorder.

Mallory grew up in Charlotte, NC, and majored in English at Duke University.

About the Author: A. J. Finn (1979 – )

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