Contemporary Authors

• The Woman in the Window ( novel) William Morrow (New York, NY), 2018

1. The woman in the window : a novel LCCN 2017002312 Type of material Book Personal name Finn, A. J., author. Main title The woman in the window : a novel / A. J. Finn. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York, NY : William Morrow, 2018. Projected pub date 1801 Description 427 pages ; 24 cm. ISBN 9780062678423 (hardcover) Library of Congress Holdings Information not available.

• Stuff - https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/books/100952707/the-woman-in-the-window-is-daniel-mallorys-debut-novel-the-new-gone-girl

  The Woman in the Window: Is Daniel Mallory's debut novel the new Gone Girl?
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  The success of The Girl on the Train shows how a popular book has an inbuilt audience when an adaptation hits cinemas.

  Daniel Mallory was in the LAX lounge on his way back from a break in Palm Springs when his agent rang and said: "We've been resisting Hollywood because we wanted to close the publishing deal first, but Fox have offered US$1 million for the book – do you want it?'"

  For any novelist, let alone a first-timer, this is the dream question, and the 38 year-old author of The Woman In The Window – a thriller which has been dubbed the new Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train – is still visibly exhilarated by the memory

  "I managed: 'I want that – yes', and then desperately wanted to tell someone, but I was travelling alone and the only people nearby were this Japanese couple with a small child who didn't seem to speak any English."

  Mallory turned to the family, smiled and gave them the thumbs-up. "And all three turned back to me and did the same," he chuckles. "They never call, they never write, but it was a lovely moment. And by the end of that week the book auction had reached US$2 million for two books."

  The Woman in the Window is even endorsed by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn.
  The Woman in the Window is even endorsed by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn.

  READ MORE:
  * The next Gone Girl?
  * Boyhood to Gone Girl: Best films of 2014
  * Movie Review: The Girl on the Train

  I open my mouth to congratulate the former publishing executive who wrote this year's biggest literary sensation in 12 months, in secret and under the pseudonym, A.J. Finn, but "I hate you" comes out instead. Which is embarrassing and a little unfair, given Mallory's wit and charm; his John Krasinki meets Ryan Reynolds all-American handsomeness; sitcom star smile and the fact that he made the five-floor trip down to greet me in Shoreditch House's reception rather than having me "sent up".

  Although, of course, it's not despite all this but because of all this – and the millions, and the Gillian Flynn comparisons and the 38 territories The Woman In The Window has already been sold to worldwide (a record for any debut novelist) – that I hate Mallory. And you can try and sneer off the psychological thriller as populist or derivative if it makes you feel any better, but the bottom line is that Mallory is a fine writer and an ingenious plot man. Which is why, no doubt, his debut immediately became an instant New York Times bestseller. You'd have to be ingenious to give a 90,000-word story basically set within the same four walls more plot twists than a silly straw. But the tale of an agoraphobic child psychologist who believes she has witnessed a vicious crime in a neighbouring Harlem town house through her kitchen window is that most lucrative and least grammatical of things: unputdownable.

  Ben Affleck starred in the wildly successful 2014 movie adaptation of Gone Girl.
  Ben Affleck starred in the wildly successful 2014 movie adaptation of Gone Girl.

  "I honestly do think I hate you," I repeat. Mallory just shrugs: "I'll take that as a compliment."

  As the Oxford-educated eldest son of Wall Street banker John and mother Pamela, this former senior editor at US publisher William Morrow – who has represented the likes of Karin Slaughter, Peter Robinson, Val McDermid and Nicci French over the years – makes success look easy.

  When he outed himself as A.J. Finn – a deliberately gender-neutral nom de plume he took on partly "because up until December I was still working and I didn't want my authors to see their editor's name scrawled across a hardback in the bookshop", and partly "because I'm a private person" – it was the "poacher turned gamekeeper" pieces that annoyed him the most. "Because no book is sure-fire and, far from being easy, this was a labour of love.

  Daniel Mallory, aka A.J. Finn, author of The Woman in the Window.
  N/A
  Daniel Mallory, aka A.J. Finn, author of The Woman in the Window.

  "So these journalists intent on suggesting or even asserting that I know the secret ingredients needed to cook up a bestseller are wrong. There is no secret sauce. If there were, I would have written a huge bestseller long ago."

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  Thirty years steeped in his own genre at work and at home won't exactly have been a hindrance, says Mallory. "I grew up devouring Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes and as a teenager I got into psychological suspense, Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell." Around the same time, he developed an obsession with Hitchcock and film noir and went on to study mystery and suspense fiction at New College, Oxford.

  The Woman In The Window is Rear Window reimagined for our times. "A culmination of all those experiences, synthesised with my own mental health issues, which were not easy to live with", Mallory says.

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  Debuting in 1954, Rear Window is considered by many to be one of the finest works by both Alfred Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart.

  For 15 years prior to writing the book, Mallory had struggled with such severe depression that, like his heroine Dr Anna Fox, he was often unable to prise himself from the bed, let alone the house, for weeks or months at a time.

  "I wouldn't talk to anyone except the cashier at the local Mexican takeaway for extended periods, and when you feel that low it's logical to contemplate some sort of release.

  "I never attempted suicide but when you find yourself considering death, or indeed longing for it, you know that there is some sort of serious system glitch within you."

  It wasn't until summer 2015 that he was diagnosed with bipolar 2 disorder and given the correct medication. It "unlocked" something in his brain, he says. "About a week after starting my new drugs, I started writing."

  Putting himself into the head of a woman "came naturally" to Mallory, who has two sisters and suspects he "often thinks like a woman". After what he'd been through, it wasn't hard to imagine the isolation of a depressive agoraphobic either.

  The empathy he feels for his pill-popping, merlot-swilling, unreliable narrator gives the book more depth than your average crime thriller. But isn't it funny – in this era of female empowerment – how much we relish a frumpy mess of an anti-heroine?

  "I think it's a reaction to Disney princesses. Because women are three-dimensional and flawed, just like men," says Mallory. "Yes, Anna is a mess, but she's not a damsel in distress. We're still given these damsels in distress, waiting to be saved by men – when most women I know are more than a match for them. So men don't own strength, and there are slobby females out there."

  Ask Mallory which strong, slobby A-lister he'd like to play Anna in the film – being produced by Oscar-winner Scott Rudin – and he won't say, but he will be demanding a cameo. "Slightly tricky since she scarcely leaves the house..."

  First he needs to finish book two, which was due two weeks ago and is "another psychological thriller, set in San Francisco, with another female protagonist. And she's pretty well adjusted. Because, well, I don't want to be that author who only writes about frumps and messes, you know?"

  Not really. I for one would take as many frumps and messes as A.J. Finn could throw at me.

• New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/books/aj-finn-the-woman-in-the-window-daniel-mallory.html

  Your Book Editor Just Snagged Your Spot on the Best-Seller List
  By KEZIAH WEIRJAN. 19, 2018

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  Four years ago, when former book editor Daniel Mallory purchased his 550-square foot Chelsea apartment, its main draw was the book storage: floor-to-ceiling shelving, which covers a wall of his living room, plus numerous nooks above doorways and under the flat screen TV that shares space among the shelves. Recently, after receiving 32 hardback copies of his debut novel, “The Woman in the Window,” published under the pseudonym A. J. Finn, Mr. Mallory had to decide which of his collection would be relegated to storage. In the end, the Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and Henry James novels got the heave-ho.

  “They’re dead,” he said of his early literary idols. “They’re not going to complain.”

  Last week, “The Woman in the Window,” a psychological thriller that pays homage to Hitchcock classics, debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. It is a happy if unsurprising endnote to the book’s publishing saga, which began in the fall of 2016, when word got out that the debut thriller at the center of an eight-house bidding war was written by an anonymous book editor. Probably because of the gender-neutral pseudonym and the book’s winning, wine-slugging unreliable narrator, Anna Fox, guesses about the author’s identity skewed female.

  The competition for North American rights ended with a $2 million, two-book winning offer from Mr. Mallory’s own publishing house, William Morrow, plus deals with a record-breaking 37 international publishers and a film deal with Fox 2000.

  “As a publishing industry veteran, I could appreciate, even at this very early stage, how unusual this sort of attention was,” Mr. Mallory said.

  Even William Morrow’s acquiring editor, Jennifer Brehl, didn’t know the author’s identity when she received the manuscript. Having read most of the book in one sitting, it was only when Ms. Brehl pitched it to William Morrow publisher Liate Stehlik, that she learned it had been written by their own colleague, Mr. Mallory, then the vice president and executive editor of William Morrow.

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  Despite Ms. Brehl’s friendship with Mr. Mallory, she was shocked. “I had no idea that he was writing a book,” she said. Had Mr. Mallory not prudently scheduled a weeklong trip to Palm Springs, which began the day his agent sent the manuscript to publishers, Ms. Brehl imagines she may have walked the book into his office to ask for his thoughts on it.

  Mr. Mallory had always planned to submit the manuscript under a pseudonym, which is a mash-up of his cousin’s name, Alice Jane, plus the name of another family member’s French bulldog.

  “I felt it would be disconcerting for my authors to wander into a bookshop and see their editor’s name writ large across a hardback,” he said.

  While editors moonlighting as authors isn’t the norm, Mr. Mallory’s crossover is not entirely unique. The novelist David Ebershoff had been working as an editor at Random House two years when his first book, “The Danish Girl,” was published in 2000. Former children’s book editor Tui Sutherland has published numerous books under her own name as well as multiple pseudonyms, including Tamara Summers, Heather Williams and Rob Kidd. Other recent author/editors of note include former Simon & Schuster editor Greer Hendricks (“The Wife Between Us,” coauthored with Sarah Pekkanen), Scribner editor in chief Colin Harrison (“You Belong to Me”), former Riverhead assistant editor Danya Kukafka (“Girl in Snow”), Random House senior editor Anna Pitoniak (“The Futures”) and Henry Holt senior editor Caroline Zancan (“Local Girls”).

  But none generated buzz on par with “The Woman in the Window” which, following its sale, collected blurbs from such authors as Gillian Flynn, who called it “a noir for the new millennium,” and Stephen King, who deemed it “one of those rare books that really is unputdownable.”

  What impressed Mr. King most was the seamless integration of classic films such as “Vertigo,” “Rear Window” and “Gaslight.”

  Mr. Mallory, who is 38, has had a near lifelong fascination with psychological thrillers that began 30 years ago, when his parents dropped him off at an art house cinema in North Carolina for the afternoon. The film playing was Dutch director and producer George Sluizer’s “The Vanishing,” which Stanley Kubrick once called “the most horrifying film I’ve ever seen.”

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  Mr. Mallory said he was terrified, but “I was unable to prize my eyes from the screen.” The dueling emotions “interested and sort of disturbed me even at that age.”

  As a teenager, he discovered Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” which proved a gateway drug to the rest of Hitchcock’s oeuvre, along with film noir and suspense novels like Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley series.

  He majored in literature at Duke University, and went on to pursue a master’s and doctorate at Oxford. There, he wrote about transgressive sexuality in the works of Highsmith, Graham Greene and Henry James, whose novel “The Turn of the Screw,” with its own unreliable narrator, Mr. Mallory considers the original psychological thriller.

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  For several years, Mr. Mallory lived in London and worked at the commercial publishing imprint Sphere, of Little, Brown UK, before returning to New York to spearhead a crime and thriller digital first initiative at William Morrow.

  While he had long considered writing fiction, it was only when he clocked the popularity of “Gone Girl” and “Girl on the Train,” two commercially successful descendants of the classic genre he’d long loved, that he realized the market was ripe for the kind of story he might want to tell. But while his publisher’s eye for a successful trend may have primed him for the idea, the novel’s premise was deeply personal.

  The idea came to Mr. Mallory one night as he sat on his couch watching an old favorite, Hitchcock’s “Rear Window.” Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a lamp switch on in the apartment across the street.

  “It occurred to me, ‘Oh, how funny, in 1954 Jimmy Stewart is spying on his neighbor, and in 2015, I’m doing the same thing,’ ” he said. “Voyeurism dies hard.”

  At the time, after struggling for a decade and a half with severe depression, Mr. Mallory had recently been diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, and was in his third week of almost total isolation as he transitioned from one medication to another.

  “I thought, too, as I was watching the woman across the street, about how, despite living in one of the most populous cities in the world, I felt quite lonely,” he said.

  Over the next two days, Mr. Mallory wrote a 7,500-word outline for a novel about a former child therapist who, trapped in her Harlem townhouse by her crippling agoraphobia, becomes obsessed with the family that moves into the building opposite her own. Once finished, Mr. Mallory sent the outline to his friend Jennifer Joel, a partner and literary agent at ICM, who encouraged him to pursue the project.

  For the next 12 months, Mr. Mallory wrote on nights and weekends, telling nobody but his sister and then-boyfriend, to whom the book is dedicated. His aim throughout the process, he said, was to write a book that felt like a film, and while the plotting came to him in an easy burst, the writing proved more of a challenge.

  “Getting a character from a sofa to a window is surprisingly difficult,” he said.

  Mr. Mallory, who describes himself as “constitutionally cautious,” continued at William Morrow for another 15 months after the sale of his book, but his international publishers hoped to send him on a nine month world tour to promote “The Woman in the Window,” and the draft of his second novel was due to Ms. Brehl.

  Five days before his book hit shelves, he had his final day at his desk job.

  While Mr. Mallory now describes himself as “significantly better off financially,” he hasn’t yet found the time to make use of his recent windfall. When he finishes his book tour, he does plan to purchase a larger apartment with a dedicated writing room. And a French bulldog.

  Correction: January 21, 2018
  An earlier version of this article misstated the spelling of a film title. The correct title is “Gaslight,” not “Gas Light.”

  Follow New York Times Books on Facebook and Twitter (@nytimesbooks), and sign up for our newsletter.

  A version of this article appears in print on January 20, 2018, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Who Is the Real A.J Finn?. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

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• London Observer - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/14/crime-fiction-daniel-mallory-woman-in-the-window-debut-interview

  The Observer
  Daniel Mallory: ‘Without Gone Girl I’d never have written this book’
  Having written his debut novel in total secrecy and published it under a pseudonym, Daniel Mallory has been astounded that The Woman in the Window has created a worldwide bidding frenzy. Tim Adams meets novelist as he steps out of the shadows

  Tim Adams

  Sun 14 Jan 2018 09.00 GMT Last modified on Tue 16 Jan 2018 17.53 GMT
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  Daniel Mallory looking through some dark glass
  Through a glass darkly: Dan Mallory, the last months he says have been ‘life changing’. Photograph: Phil Fisk for the Observer
  Last year, Daniel Mallory had one of those weeks that all first-time novelists fantasise about. Through an agent he had submitted his manuscript to several publishers and was about to take a short holiday. The excitement started when he arrived at Newark airport in New York to take a plane to Palm Springs. That was when the first offer to publish his book came in.

  After that, Mallory says: “It was the full dream.” His phone lit up with offers and messages like in the movies. “I was going on holiday with someone and he was taking a separate flight and he texted me in mid-air, and asked: ‘How is your flight?’ And I texted back: ‘Life changing.’ And he wrote back ‘LOL’, and I was like, ‘No, Really!”’

  All these things coincided and the character of Anna strode into my brain, lugging her story behind her
  The book – The Woman in the Window – was already being talked of as the natural successor to Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, and Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train. By the time Mallory returned to New York a few days later a worldwide auction was in place for his book, with offers reported in seven figures; by then the film rights had been pre-emptively sold to Fox.

  Unlike the one or two other debut authors who, each year, win that particular lottery, Mallory, now 38, was not a stranger to this process. When he submitted his manuscript (under his “gender-neutral” pseudonym AJ Finn) he was a senior editor at the New York publishing house, William Morrow. Prior to that he had been the publisher of the British mass-market crime imprint Sphere. The authors he published – including Karin Slaughter, Peter Robinson and Nicci French – had known auctions of their own.

  In the end Mallory sold the American rights to Morrow, the publisher he worked for (who did not initially know it was his work); his novel went on to secure him deals in 37 different territories (“We think it might be a record for a debut novel,” he suggests.) The Woman in the Window boasts blurbs from Stephen King – “Unputdownable” – and Gillian Flynn – “Astounding. Amazing.” The movie is being produced by Scott Rudin (Oscar winner for No Country for Old Men). Mallory is preparing himself for a blitz of publicity of the kind he has previously orchestrated for others. It is, on the one hand, something that fills him with dread – “I am an intensely private person” – on the other, a fascinating duty. “The Czechs, for example, have 30,000 copies in print!”

  Getting away with it: a scene from The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), starring Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow.
  Facebook Twitter Pinterest Getting away with it: a scene from The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), starring Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. Photograph: Miramax/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock

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  Having read Mallory’s book, it comes as no surprise to me that the Czechs (and others) have cranked up their presses. It employs all of the psychological candy for Girl on a Train addicts – an unreliable internalised viewpoint, a fascinating stranger’s home, a ragged edge of paranoia, an envy at different, more perfect lives – and gives them stylish and compulsive twists. Mallory is clever enough to have made a virtue of his reference points (“It is often said that ‘good writers borrow, great writers steal,’” he says. “If I had not read the work of Gillian Flynn or Kate Atkinson I wouldn’t have written the book I did.”) His heroine, the agoraphobic Anna Fox, who watches old films on a loop as well as her neighbours over the way, is herself archly conscious of her prime mover – Hitchcock’s Rear Window. For all this cleverness, The Woman in the Window is, too, a book that at certain points is so unnervingly in control, and suddenly dark, that it makes you want to know a little more about the mind that made it.

  I grew up gorging myself on Agatha Christie and the Hardy Boys. I didn’t drink alcohol. Never smoked
  I met Mallory in the warehouse-chic bar of Soho House in London’s Spitalfields (he lived for several years, he says, just up the road, next to a Wetherspoons, and is enjoying the contrast). He is Hollywood-handsome, quick-spirited and intense in person, fresh back from the Frankfurt book fair and still high on his 37 territories.

  There is a performative aspect to his conversation (to the extent that I half-wonder at one point if “Dan Mallory” might also be a pseudonym). He talks of the ways that the “stars have aligned” for him over this book. And he outlines how, if he had learned one thing from his time in publishing, it was the value of a commercial imperative. “There is no doubt worth in the kind of writing that only 12 people will appreciate, but I don’t consider that the best use of my time.” He laughs. “If I were to boil my publishing credo down to three words it would be: ‘Must Have Plot.’”

  If this all sounds like a straightforward tale of calculated publishing success, however, the more you talk to Mallory, the more you understand that the journey to his million-dollar advance has not been a simple one.

  He grew up in New York. His dad was a banker, first-generation graduate, who “put himself through school by working at a petrol station and playing baseball on scholarship”. His mother, by contrast, came from a well-to-do New England family and, as a young woman, worked in publishing herself.

  ‘Hitchcock’s characters are always seeking some kind of shelter’: a scene from Rear Window (1954) with James Stewart and Grace Kelly.
  Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Hitchcock’s characters are always seeking some kind of shelter’: a scene from Rear Window (1954) with James Stewart and Grace Kelly. Photograph: Snap/Rex Features
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  Mallory is reflexively guarded about his childhood, except to insist that he was “not wildly popular at school”. He was a boy who wanted to escape from the day to day and his favourite destinations were crime fiction and classic cinema. “I grew up gorging myself on Agatha Christie and the Hardy Boys,” he says. “I loved the Hardy Boys. In fact, I loved Frank, who was the studious dark-haired older Hardy Boy. His younger brother, Joe, was sporty and blond, and even at that age I distrusted blonds!”

  The great luck of his adolescence, he says, was that the family moved to a neighbourhood with an arthouse cinema a block away and, apparently mostly in the absence of friends, he camped out there at weekends, steeping himself in film noir retrospectives, Hitchcock marathons and classic movie nights. “I feasted on that stuff, still do,” he says. He lived, he suggests, through films and books during his college years. “I didn’t drink alcohol until I was 21. Never smoked. Not tempted. I didn’t have a kiss until I was 21 either.”

  Did all the vices happen together?

  “Yes they did! Twenty-one was quite the year, let me tell you!”

  After undergraduate study at Duke University, Mallory came over to Oxford and pursued his passion for crime fiction, which had focused down to an obsession with the novels of Patricia Highsmith. He was attached to New College doing postgraduate work, looking at the ways the Ripley books, in particular, had a homoerotic dimension; the ways in which Highsmith’s characters’ sexual impulses became sublimated as criminal behaviour. Mallory describes himself as “not a rule-breaker” and therefore drawn to the idea of it. “I think one of the reasons I was attracted to Highsmith is that most crime fiction is morally educative: morals will be upheld, justice will be doled out, wrongdoers will be caught and punished,” he says. “But that did not happen with Tom Ripley and it fascinated me to see this character get away with stuff. It fascinated me more to find myself rooting for him. I still think that is a pretty nifty trick.”

  Some authors say their characters surprise them. I don’t ever want that
  While he was researching Ripley, Mallory was also trying to cope, he says, with some tough mental-health issues of his own. He is understandably wary of dwelling on that time, but offers the outline. He had suffered with depression in his final year at Duke and it steadily worsened, to the extent that at Oxford, and when he subsequently took up his role as publisher at Sphere, he was sometimes forced into periods of debilitating absence.

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  His Ripley-fuelled understanding of the possibilities of crime fiction saw him promoted rapidly to publisher at Sphere, but it was not until he was back in the States, having taken up his job at William Morrow, that a new medication got him consistently well. Getting his depression under control almost immediately gave him the energy to write, he says – and also a subject (his narrator, Anna Fox, shares that condition). Mallory felt extra-ordinarily grateful to have finally emerged on the other side of depression, and to have the perspective to understand it.

  He was lucky in another respect, too. The kind of book he had always wanted to write, but never felt able to, was suddenly the kind of book that everyone wanted to read. “For a long time,” he says, “probably since 1988 when The Silence of the Lambs was published, the crime market was dominated by books about serial killers. I like a good serial-killer thriller, but, probably happily, I do not have one in me. Then Gone Girl changed the game. Psychological suspense is what I had studied and what I thought I would be able to write.”

  How easily did the book come, I ask, once he got going?

  “Quickly, actually,” he says. He was watching Rear Window, and thought it was interesting that a lot of Hitchcock has not been remade or rethought, and he believed it had plenty of relevance to our moment of fake news and nothing being all that it seemed. “I like the way, in Hitchcock, characters are always seeking some kind of shelter,” he says. He was thinking of “Highsmith and sociopathy”, and his own depression. “And all these things coincided and this character of Anna just sort of strode into my brain lugging her story behind her.”

  Making headlines: Hitchcock on the set of Rear Window.
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  Making headlines: Hitchcock on the set of Rear Window. Photograph: Paramount/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock
  The book hardly shifts from the claustrophobic vantage indicated in its title. Mallory wrote it in a rush parked at the desk in his one-bedroom flat in Chelsea in New York, across the street from a row of townhouses framed by his own window. “I live in a relatively ugly house and only occupy half of one floor,” he says. “But these houses across the street are vastly expensive, $13m homes. The view is the same as in the book, but I set the action 100 blocks north in Harlem, where it is credible that you might buy a $4m home.”

  A good deal of his description through Anna’s eyes, depressive and drinking and, separated from her own family, possibly delusionary, comes from looking across the street. A few people have told Mallory that it seems improbable that people would never shutter their windows or close their blinds. But, he insists: “New Yorkers don’t do that. Actually Londoners don’t do that. You walk through parts of both cities in the evening and these houses will have lives on full display.”

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  Mallory has a writer’s fascination for the strange narrative of other people’s lives; his book reminds you that all novelists are at heart voyeurs.

  “My editor had me nix as implausible the idea, say, that someone would leave a house key in a lantern beside the door, but that is actually something my neighbours in Chelsea do,” he says. “I have seen it. I could walk into their house at any time if I wanted! I am not so inclined. But time and again I have watched them do this.”

  His book, and its sudden troubling acts of violence, hinge on the partial narrative we impose on other people, how we might get a completely false picture of who they are.

  “Anna repeatedly does this,” he says. “Sometimes she strikes lucky, sometimes she is way off base. And, of course, the device that motors the plot is: ‘What did she see?’ Did she see anything at all?”

  The book took him exactly a year to write. Mallory was still working full time at his publisher, and disclosed to no one that he was working on a book. When it came to submitting it he felt he had to do so pseudonymously “because I also didn’t want to put my finger on the scale, I didn’t want to sway anyone either way because they knew me or whatever”. He also liked “the fact that the dual identities help me keep my stories straight in a way”.

  Because the writing comes from a different part of his head?

  “That’s right. The publishing process is reactive. Whereas writing is almost wholly creative. I needed to keep the two apart.”

  I wonder if finishing the book marked a kind of before and after for him, a stage on the path to what he calls his current “very good place”, the recovery of his mental health.

  He says maybe, but not in any direct way. “Writing a book, for me, was a lot like assembling a puzzle,” he says. “That satisfying click when the last pieces fall into place.”

  Before he embarks on his sing-for-his-supper book tour across the States he has been at work on a second thriller, this one set in San Francisco, “the only Hitchcockian American place that is not New York”. He is also in the process of giving up his day job as an editor.

  “I didn’t have much choice, really,” he says. “I don’t like half-assing things.”

  His new life as a writer, gamekeeper turned poacher, seems to fill him with both excitement and trepidation. He likes the idea of being in control of his fictional worlds. “Some authors say their characters surprise them,” he says. “I don’t ever want that.” At the same time he hopes that he can maintain some anonymity, that he can keep AJ Finn at one remove from Daniel Mallory. “I am not especially interested in author’s bios,” he says. “I am buying their novel, not their memoir. I view it as a sign of respect to not want to know too much.”

  book cover
  I wonder, given the way publishers put their authors through the publicity mill, how easy it will be for Mallory to maintain that line. He hopes to orchestrate a Hitchcockian walk-on part in the film of his book. “I want a cameo, of course I do,” he says. “There is that one scene in a café, I could be in the background – though I fear I might be too hammy…” You have a strong sense with him, perhaps like all writers, that he wants to be seen and not seen, and, above all, to be able to tell the tale.

  The Woman in the Window is out on 22 January, £12.99. Order a copy for £11.04 at bookshop.theguardian.com

• Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR - https://www.npr.org/2018/01/20/579094310/how-the-man-in-the-apartment-hit-big-with-the-woman-in-the-window

  < How The Man In The Apartment Hit Big With 'The Woman In The Window' January 20, 20187:25 AM ET Listen· 5:08 5:08 Queue Download Embed Facebook Twitter Flipboard Email SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Take a touch of Hitchcock and of "Gone Girl." Add a mysterious author and rumors of a huge price tag, and you come up with that rare bird, a debut novel that hit No. 1 on The New York Times' best-seller list in its first week on the market. It's called "The Woman In The Window." NPR's Lynn Neary has the story. LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: Brand-name authors like James Patterson or Stephen King hit the top of The New York Times' best-seller list in the first week all the time. Unknowns - not so often. GREG COWLES: It is very unusual. NEARY: Greg Cowles is the longtime writer of the "Inside The List" column at the Times. He says the buzz around "The Woman In The Window" has been building since a hotly contested auction for the novel by an unknown author named A. J. Finn. Turns out, that's a pseudonym for Daniel Mallory, an executive editor at William Morrow, the publishing company that bought the book. But Cowles says, even with all that interest, no book is a sure bet. COWLES: You really never know. Despite the buzz, despite the huge advance sales, the publishers themselves never know - will this book hit? You can't manufacture a best-seller. NEARY: Daniel Mallory, aka A. J. Finn, probably would know how to manufacture one. He has spent a lifetime reading, studying and editing mysteries and thrillers. And when "Gone Girl" sparked a trend in psychological thrillers with an unreliable female narrator, he was tempted to jump on the bandwagon. DANIEL MALLORY: When Gillian Flynn published "Gone Girl," I thought, aha - this is the sort of book I've loved and could possibly try to write. The trouble was, I didn't have a story. NEARY: Mallory didn't want to put a mystery together like a jigsaw puzzle. He wanted the book to have substance. He was also suffering from depression, which he later discovered was misdiagnosed. MALLORY: For days or weeks or even months at a stretch during the 15 years in which I struggled with misdiagnosed bipolar disorder, there were times when I could not prize myself from bed, let alone leave the house. NEARY: While adjusting to new medication, Mallory took some time off from work. He watched a lot of old movies - his other great passion. And one day, as Hitchcock's "Rear Window" played in the background, he looked out his own window and noticed his neighbor across the street. MALLORY: In accordance with fine Manhattan tradition, I watch her for a couple moments. She is settling herself in an armchair, aiming a remote at her TV. And behind me on screen, Thelma Ritter is chiding Jimmy Stewart for peering across the courtyard into Raymond Burr's apartment. (SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "REAR WINDOW") THELMA RITTER: (As Stella) I can smell trouble right here in this apartment. First you smash your leg, then you get to looking out the window, see things you shouldn't see - trouble. MALLORY: And I thought to myself, how funny that in 1954 Jimmy Stewart is spying on his neighbors, and I'm doing the exact same thing 60 years later. And just like that, an idea for a story presented itself. And striding towards that story from another corner of my brain was this character who had struggled, as I had struggled, with mental health issues and whose grief seemed comparable to mine in intensity, although the circumstances were very different from my own. NEARY: That character is Anna Fox. She suffers from agoraphobia - gets panicked if she even feels the air outside her front door. MALLORY: She was once a respected child psychologist, but she has withdrawn from her profession and, indeed, from the world in the wake of some sort of trauma. And we don't learn the details of that trauma until about two thirds of the way through the book. She does try to occupy herself as best she can. She learns French, she counsels fellow agoraphobes through a digital forum, and she watches old films. They form a sort of soundtrack to her life. NEARY: She also drinks a lot of red wine, which she mixes recklessly with her meds. And she spends a great deal of time spying on her neighbors with a long lens camera. One day, when her mind is especially foggy, she's watching "Dark Passage" as Humphrey Bogart is going under anesthesia. (SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DARK PASSAGE") HOUSELEY STEVENSON: (As Dr. Walter Coley) I'm going to give you some shots that'll freeze your face. Now, just close your eyes. Got a fine aesthetic - used it in the last war. It's in your bloodstream now. NEARY: As the film plays, Anna looks in her neighbor's window and thinks she sees a murder. STEVENSON: (As Dr. Walter Coley) It'll be all right. It'll be all right. NEARY: The victim is a woman who has befriended Anna. But no one believes Anna ever met her, much less saw her get stabbed to death. The murder is only one of the mysteries that will keep readers guessing. Mallory takes his time revealing why Anna is so traumatized that she cannot leave her house. MALLORY: What I can say about this particular dimension of the book is that I consider it the heart of the story. And whether you anticipate its details or parameters or not is sort of by the by. It's really incidental. It's not about surprise. It's not about a jack-in-the-box effect. It's about how such an event would impact someone, how they would cope with it and how they would struggle to move past it. NEARY: In the tradition of many mysteries, Mallory set his story in a confined space. His next book, which he's already working on, is set in a big city - San Francisco - and he says it feels great to get a breath of fresh air. Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.

• Criminalelement.com - https://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2017/12/qa-with-aj-finn-author-of-the-woman-in-the-window-comment-sweepstakes

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  SWEEPSTAKES!
  Q&A with A. J. Finn, Author of The Woman in the Window
  CRIME HQ and A. J. FINN

  Read this exclusive Q&A with A. J. Finn, author of The Woman in the Window, then make sure you're signed in and comment for a chance to win a copy of this electrifying debut psychological thriller!

  A. J. Finn is the pseudonym of veteran editor Dan Mallory, whose debut novel, The Woman in the Window, has been sold in 38 territories worldwide and is in development as a major motion picture from Fox. Finn, a native of NY, spent 10 years in England before returning to the Big Apple.

  Recently, Finn kindly answered questions about his transition from editor to author, his debut novel, and the inspirations that helped shape The Woman in the Window, among other things.

  What was your inspiration for creating an agoraphobic character? How much research went into the condition before writing the book?
  On my birthday in 2015, six weeks before I began writing The Woman in the Window, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. (Happy birthday to me!) For many people, this would have signaled the beginning of an arduous journey; for me, it marked the end of one.

  For more than 15 years, I had grappled with severe depression, which infested and infected all aspects of my life: my relationships, my studies, my career. It also routinely confined me to my home; some days I found it impossible to extricate myself from my bed, let alone leave the house. And in combating depression, I resorted to every treatment imaginable: medication, meditation, talk therapy, hypnotherapy, et cetera—with mixed results.

  Then my diagnosis was corrected, and a new drug regimen was prescribed. A month and a half later, I felt significantly improved … and liberated to pursue a creative project. That project was The Woman in the Window—a novel in which the heroine, not incidentally, is a depressive—and in writing it, I had the opportunity to examine my own struggles.

  In the book, Anna is always watching classic films. The book is often described as “Hitchcockian.” There's even a film noir from 1944 titled The Woman in the Window. Did any films, in particular, serve as an influence while writing this book?

  Rear Window inspired the story. Shadow of a Doubt and George Cukor’s Gaslight also shape the narrative. Beyond that, though, I’m reluctant to cite specific titles, as some of them might clue readers into what’s happening. There are almost four dozen films name-checked in The Woman in the Window—some of them indisputable classics, some of them justifiably more obscure ... but I like to think that they all contribute to the book’s atmosphere of menace and mystery.

  What makes The Woman in the Window different from all of the other psychological thrillers out there right now?
  To begin with, The Woman in the Window has been sold in 38 territories prior to publication, which—we believe—makes it the most widely acquired debut novel in history at this point in its lifecycle. And the film rights were bought outright by Fox. So I like to think that three dozen publishers and a cadre of studio executives can’t be too wrong.

  Moreover, the protagonist isn’t your average woman-in-jeopardy. Often in genre fiction—not always, but often—the female characters, even those in starring roles, are helplessly, hopelessly dependent on men. They fret about men; they rely upon men; they orbit men. Issues of “empowerment” aside, it isn’t very realistic—at least not in my experience.

  This, I think, is one of the reasons why Lisbeth Salander of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Amy Dunne of Gone Girl made such an impact: like many women, they’re more than a match for the men in their lives. I was keen to create a female lead who isn't a damsel in distress. Anna Fox isn’t as crusading as Salander or as controlling as Amy Dunne, but over the course of the book, she pursues an inquiry, unravels a mystery, and confronts an antagonist, all without the help of a man. She’s a grownup. She’s a woman. And that’s a terrific thing to be.

  Beyond the protagonist and the pre-pub activity, though, this book is the product of what I think of as my life of crime. Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle introduced me to the abiding pleasures of suspense fiction when I was a child, and during my teen years, I dove headfirst into the work of Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell, two writers whose novels bristle with psychological acuity. Later, as a doctoral student at Oxford, I studied Highsmith and Graham Greene, and then I launched a career publishing crime fiction and thrillers. So I bring to The Woman in the Window more than 30 years of experience in the genre.

  How did your experience as an editor influence your writing? What was it like being on the other side of the process?
  In my case, there was very little editing—in part because, as a professional book editor, I’m able to review and critique my own work, but also because my agent had provided extensive notes before we submitted a revised manuscript to publishers. So the book as you read it is what my editors leafed through when they received the submission.

  I’ve worked in publishing for 10 years, during which time I’ve often seen authors react badly to editorial guidance—even when it’s exactly what they need! As a writer myself, I resolved to grow a thick skin. I’m not writing for myself, after all, and I defer to the judgment and expertise of the talented professionals whose job is to improve my thoroughly improvable scribbles.

  The Woman in the Window has already had its film rights sold to Fox. If you had your dream movie cast, who would play Anna, her husband Ed, and daughter Olivia? The Russells?
  I suspect that I could name six actresses only to see the filmmakers cast a seventh! So instead, I’ll tell you whom I would have cast were Hitchcock making the film 60 or 70 years ago: Gene Tierney. She wasn't a “Hitchcock blonde,” or indeed any kind of blonde, and perhaps that's why he never worked with her, but her life was marked by a series of traumas that would have helped to prepare her for the lead role. And she radiated both steeliness and vulnerability.

  I describe David, the mysterious tenant, as a Gregory Peck lookalike. So in his case, I’d have cast Gregory Peck.

  What was the hardest part of writing this book?
  There were two primary challenges. The first was steeping myself in the mind of a character besieged by self-reproach, doubt, and panic. I empathize deeply with Anna, and I often found her excellent company, but her emotional and narrative arcs are pretty intense, so I frequently felt drained after spending time with her.

  Elsewhere, I found it surprisingly difficult to compose basic sentences when it came to ushering a character—physically, not psychologically—from point A to point B. Managing a transition like that without calling too much attention to it while at the same time keeping the reader looped in proved tricky.

  What are you currently reading?
  I tend to shuttle between a broad range of books. I loved Golden Hill, a pitch-perfect picaresque set in 18th-century New York. I’ve just finished Madeline Miller’s spellbinding Circe, a retelling of the Greek myth; The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery’s exploration of invertebrate consciousness; and Strange Weather, Joe Hill’s stunning four-novella collection. Right now, I’m halfway through both Carl Hiaasen’s Native Tongue—among his dizziest, daffiest capers—and Uncle Silas, which I only pretended to have read in grad school. Tomorrow, I’ll turn the last page of Amor Towles’s magnificent A Gentleman in Moscow. Next up: Manhattan Beach, the new Jennifer Egan novel, and a fantasy called Smoke by Dan Vyleta.

  What is something that readers would be surprised to learn about you?
  I’m left-handed, but as a schoolchild was forced to write with my right hand. To this day, I hold the pen in my right hand as though I’m using it in the left, with my fingers curled around the paper. It’s pretty damn uncomfortable. I’m slightly worried about signing books in this fashion.

  Also, although I struggle mightily with anxiety, I never get particularly anxious about public speaking or interviews. Not sure why. But I won’t question it.

  Finally, I’m desperate to adopt a French bulldog, to be named Ike. He’ll become a star on social media. I’d like to create a series of web shorts called Everybody Likes Ike in which the pooch will play my inconsiderate flatmate. It could work.

  What would be your murder weapon of choice?
  Poison. I’m fascinated by it. My library shelves are stuffed with ranks of books like The Poisoner’s Handbook, a compelling history of the stuff in Jazz Age New York, and numerous accounts of celebrated poisonings throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. I’ve even devised a method of delivery, although I’ll keep it to myself for now, in case I need it for a novel—or indeed for a murder. All that said, the fatal furniture in Wilkie Collins’s short story “A Terribly Strange Bed” is not without its charms.

  Desert island. Three books. Go.
  This is a punishing question. (I can omit a couple of my all-time favorites, as I’ve more or less committed them to memory.) Gun to my head, and in alphabetical order by author:

  The Annotated Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (and edited by Leslie Klinger), which not only comprises all 56 canonical stories as well as the four novels but bursts with fascinating notes, addenda, and other bonus material. It’s an extended study in both iconic literature and fin de siècle history.
  Howards End, E. M. Forster’s big-hearted, clear-eyed, thoroughly lovely novel of Edwardian England in which lives and loves collide in ways both wholly unexpected and almost unbearably moving.
  The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. This Newbery-winning murder mystery is ostensibly for children, but Raskin’s plotting is so fiendish, and her writing so sharp, that the book continues to thrill and reward me 25 years after I first read it.

• Curtis Brown - https://www.curtisbrown.co.uk/client/a-j-finn

  A J Finn is the pseudonym of Daniel Mallory, currently a senior publishing executive at William Morrow/ HarperCollins. An Oxford graduate and former book critic, he lives in New York City.

  His debut novel, The Woman in the Window, is currently in development as a major motion picture at Fox.

• Sydney Morning Herald - http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/aj-finn-the-man-who-was-born-to-write-crime-fiction-20180103-h0d1l4.html

  JANUARY 12 2018
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  A.J. Finn: The man who was born to write crime fiction
  Jason Steger
  To say A.J. Finn is a specialist in crime would be something of an understatement. It's been part of his cultural DNA almost since he started reading.

  As a child, the family would return to his mother's rambling, family home at East Hampton on Long Island - "sounds very glamorous, but the place was a wreck, borderline condemned" - that was stuffed with mysteries, thrillers and detective novels. Everyone read them and Finn was encouraged to as well. He adored Agatha Christie and the writers of the Golden Age.

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  A.J. Finn, author of The Woman in the Window.
  A.J. Finn, author of The Woman in the Window. Photo: Supplied
  Later he discovered Ruth Rendell and Patricia Highsmith, and as a graduate student at New College, Oxford, wrote his doctoral thesis on Highsmith. So when he finished his studies it seemed logical to get into publishing. He spent 10 years at the Little, Brown imprint Sphere in London, where he specialised in – what else? – crime and thriller publishing, before shifting back to the United States where he is executive editor at William Morrow. For the moment.

  The next step seems inevitable, at least to the outside observer. When we speak over the phone, he from his home in Chelsea, New York, it is only five days before publication of his first novel, The Woman in the Window, four days before the script for the film adaptation is due (not from him, but more of that later) and two days before he abandons a publishing career that has included looking after Christie's work.

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  http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/aj-finn-the-man-who-was-born-to-write-crime-fiction-20180103-h0d1l4.html
  The Woman in the Window, by A.J. Finn.
  The Woman in the Window, by A.J. Finn. Photo: Supplied
  After we've established whether I call him A.J. - as in his pseudonym - or Dan as in Daniel Mallory, his real name, I wonder how's he feeling about becoming a full-time novelist? "It's frightening; I will be out of the publishing game entirely." And beginning his new life with publication of his first novel, which has already been sold into 38 territories? "Anxious. Eager yet nervous."

  The Woman in the Window is a taut thriller about Anna Fox, a psychologist with an encyclopaedic knowledge of old noir films, who sees from the window of her four-storey Harlem home in New York something nasty happen to one of her neighbours. But there's little Anna can do about it as she is agoraphobic and lives on her own after separating from her husband Ed, who has custody of their daughter Olivia. Furthermore, Anna has a significant drink problem and is on serious drugs for her mental health ... no surprise, then, that no one believes what she says.

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  Somehow she has to get to the bottom of who those neighbours, the Russells, really are, what really happened to Jane Russell, why their son Ethan keeps turning up on her doorstep and what her handsome lodger David, who rents her basement, has been up to.

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  Not easy when you can't go outside, your meds are going haywire and you're drinking two or three bottles of merlot a day.

  It is a cinematic novel, plotted carefully and written in 100 short chapters that ensure the momentum rarely dips below full speed. The tension is heightened by it all taking place in Anna's home. So, a contemporary locked-room mystery with the most unreliable of narrators.

  It sounds as if Finn has led a charmed life and the path to publication has been as smooth as the red wine Anna drinks (she does like a top drop, it has to be said). But it wasn't quite as simple as that. When Finn was 21 he was diagnosed with severe depression. "For 15 years thereafter I wrestled with it and in doing so resorted to pretty much every treatment imaginable." Then in summer 2015 he saw a "brilliant Russian" psychiatrist who concluded Finn had been misdiagnosed: he didn't have unipolar depression, he was bipolar.

  "I argued because I am argumentative by nature and said I had never experienced what I would consider a manic episode; I had never gone berserk the way Carrie does in Homeland. He said 'there are different strains of bipolar and I think you've got what we call bipolar two where the highs are not so high, but the lows are lower and last longer'."

  The upshot was another prescription and he knew what to expect, changing from old medication to new. "I know it's an unpleasant experience – I always feel like Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk."

  But it was during the summer, and with the publishing industry in virtual hiatusFinn spent weeks on his sofa "gorging myself on books I love and old films". The new meds seemed to be working and one night, while watching Rear Window, "a light flared in my peripheral vision and I saw that my neighbour had turned on a light in her home and as I watched her I thought 'this is funny, Jimmy Stewart on my screen in 1953'."

  At that moment he realised maybe there was a story to be had, a way to reboot Hitchcock's film for the 21st century.

  "I wanted to write a thriller that made use of the tropes that Rear Window established, but at the same time I wanted to create a book that had a bit more on its mind and in its heart than your average psychological thriller or domestic noir. So it was a happy collision of character who was freighted with a lot of what I had experienced and plot."

  Anna is seriously flawed but also quite formidable in her way. Finn doesn't like many genre-fiction female characters "even those in starring roles because they obsess over men, they fret about men, they're reliant on men, they orbit men and in my experience that isn't particularly real", which is he thinks why characters such as Amy Dunne in Gone Girl and Lisbeth Salander in the Dragon Tattoo series have made such an impact.

  The same applies in films, he says. Anna is very much the opposite to the character played by Grace Kelly in Rear Window. "The heroines of these older films for the most part are pretty weak, they don't do much. It's usually up to the menfolk to swing in and save them."

  Finn has always been attracted to novels and films with a single setting. He cites Phillip Noyce's film, Dead Calm, as an example.

  "In noir and Hitchcock – I do distinguish between them – characters are constantly seeking confinement. Hitchcock famously staged a number of films in confined settings – Rope, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, Lifeboat. In noir films by his contemporaries, characters are always ducking into dark alleys, taking refuge in bars trying to escape the world that is seeking to punish them. In so doing they create their own little hell, their own insular reality. That's what I wanted to create for Anna Fox."

  And as you get further into the book, "you realise that the house itself is a kind of villain or enemy that she must defeat in order to salvage herself. What she believes is a refuge is literally a prison."

  Finn's manuscript was submitted anonymously to William Morrow. He was on holiday at the time, which was some relief as it "would have shred my nerves" to be at the editorial meeting where it would have been discussed.

  I wondered about how his work as an editor affected his writing and how it affected the editing process.

  "Editing is in some way a surprisingly proactive process in that you are constantly challenged to come up with solutions to editorial issues. But fundamentally you are reacting, you are absorbing the prose and registering your response. In writing my book I was able to do that even as I created that response. It was an internal dialogue for better or worse and I'd say for better because it did help me whip through the manuscript at a pretty steady pace."

  And since the manuscript was bought and the film rights sold he has distanced himself from the actual publishing. But he will travel extensively – Brazil, Holland, Korea – to help, having already done so on both side of the Atlantic for pre-publication promotion.

  Finn is keen for the book to pay off for his 38 publishers. After all, he knows what it's like to acquire a book.

  "It's been widely and accurately reported that I made a whacking good sum out of this book," he acknowledges. "Given what they have put into this book, given that I know what I have put into the books that I have published, it's only fair that they see a maximum return on investment."

  Hollywood got wind of the book early in the process and Fox paid a seven-figure sum to buy the rights rather than option them. Oscar winner Scott Rudin is producing and Pulitzer winner Tracy Letts, author of August: Osage County, is due to submit his script the day before the novel is published. "Wow, yes," he says when he realises this is imminent.

  The Woman in the Window references many old films and, like the use of music in Ian Rankin's novels, they provide a sort of emotional soundtrack to Anna's predicament and enhance the atmosphere. But there's one film that Anna doesn't mention - Rear Window.

  The Woman in the Window is published on January 15 by HarperCollins at $29.99.

• Kirkus Reviews - https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/daniel-mallory-william-morrow/

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  Q&A: DANIEL MALLORY, VICE PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE EDITOR AT WILLIAM MORROW
  July 8, 2015
  What are some upcoming trends?

  Genre fiction that transcends its base, selling across and especially up the market. Gone Girl ignited a psychological-thriller bonfire, and The Girl on the Train is stoking the flames. Although this brand of moody, provocative suspense has existed in popular fiction for some time—Ruth Rendell was an early pioneer—it’s only recently that American audiences climbed aboard. The best psychological thrillers, by the likes of Sophie Hannah, Nicci French, and of course Gillian Flynn, bristle with insight into human behavior; they can appeal to a broad base of mystery fans and literary-fiction readers. The same goes for powerful, artful police procedurals by Peter Robinson, Karin Slaughter, Louise Penny, Kate Atkinson, Sara Paretsky, and Ian Rankin, bestselling authors all. Similarly, literate fantasy in the vein of Neil Gaiman and Deborah Harkness and sophisticated so-called women’s fiction writers like Liane Moriarty and Jojo Moyes are able to connect with both genre and literary readerships.

  What book/genre/topic would you like to see cross your transom?

  I’d love to publish a new Alienist and to see historical genre fiction gain more traction in the American marketplace. There are many exceptional authors of historical thrillers—C.J. Sansom, S.J. Parris, Alex Grecian, Lyndsay Faye, Iain Pears—but so far they haven’t consistently found the audiences they deserve.

  What is unique about your corner of the industry?

  Variety and impact. Morrow has been punching well above its weight in recent years, with outright (and ongoing) phenomena in the form of Orphan Train, American Sniper, The Pioneer Woman Cooks, and, under the new Dey Street imprint, Yes Please—a literary novel, a combat memoir, a cookbook, and a pop-culture title. Very few houses can acquire so broadly, publish so effectively, and market with such ingenuity. What’s more, Morrow continues to diversify itself, expanding into literary fiction and nonfiction, rebranding our pop-culture list, and leading the e-book–original charge with our Impulse imprints. It’s the best of the adult-publishing industry in microcosm. It’s the go-to destination for more and more big names. And it’s a lovely place to work—collegial, creative, professional, grown up.

  Anything else you’d like to add?

  I want to spread the wealth and recommend two new titles I had nothing to do with: Disclaimer, a gutsy, sensational psychological thriller by Renée Knight, and Philip and Carol Zaleski’s The Fellowship, which tracks Tolkien and Lewis through the many Oxford pubs where they debated theology and mythology and where, in later years, I would get quite drunk.

  Daniel Mallory is vice president and executive editor at William Morrow. During his time as publisher of Sphere at Little, Brown UK, the imprint published or acquired books by J.K. Rowling, Nicholas Sparks, Patricia Cornwell, Stephenie Meyer, Mitch Albom, and Tina Fey. At Morrow, he publishes a range of New York Times and internationally bestselling authors, including Agatha Christie, Jenny Colgan, Sophie Hannah, Sara Paretsky, Peter Robinson, Karin Slaughter, Wilbur Smith, and Susan Wiggs. He also conceived and launched the Witness Impulse line of digital originals, which has recorded sales of 1.25 million e-books in its first 18 months. Daniel has been profiled in USA Today and on Radio 4, and he’s written for The Times Literary Supplement, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Areté.

Finn, A.J.: THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW
Kirkus Reviews. (Nov. 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Finn, A.J. THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW HarperCollins (Adult Fiction) $26.99 1, 2 ISBN: 978-0-06-267841-6

A lonely woman in New York spends her days guzzling merlot, popping pills, and spying on the neighbors--until something she sees sucks her into a vortex of terror.

"The Miller home across the street--abandon hope, all ye who enter here--is one of five townhouses that I can survey from the south-facing windows of my own." A new family is moving in on her Harlem street, and Dr. Anna Fox already knows their names, employment histories, how much they paid for their house, and anything else you can find out using a search engine. Following a mysterious accident, Anna is suffering from agoraphobia so severe that she hasn't left her house in months. She speaks to her husband and daughter on the phone--they've moved out because "the doctors say too much contact isn't healthy"--and conducts her relationships with her neighbors wholly through the zoom lens of her Nikon D5500. As she explains to fellow sufferers in her online support group, food and medication (not to mention cases of wine) can be delivered to your door; your housecleaner can take out the trash. Anna's psychiatrist and physical therapist make house calls; a tenant in her basement pinch-hits as a handyman. To fight boredom, she's got online chess and a huge collection of DVDs; she has most of Hitchcock memorized. Both the game of chess and noir movie plots--Rear Window, in particular--will become spookily apt metaphors for the events that unfold when the teenage son of her new neighbors knocks on her door to deliver a gift from his mother. Not long after, his mother herself shows up...and then Anna witnesses something almost too shocking to be real happening in their living room. Boredom won't be a problem any longer.

Crackling with tension, and the sound of pages turning, as twist after twist sweeps away each hypothesis you come up with about what happened in Anna's past and what fresh hell is unfolding now.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Finn, A.J.: THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Nov. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A512028698/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=751c8be4. Accessed 16 Feb. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A512028698

The Woman in the Window
Jane Murphy
Booklist. 114.5 (Nov. 1, 2017): p33.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
* The Woman in the Window.

By A. J. Finn.

Jan. 2018.448p. Morrow, $26.99 (9780062678416); e-book, $12.99 (9780062678447).

"Funeral March of a Marionette" is heard somewhere off in the distance as the shadow of Alfred Hitchcock, for whose TV program that 1872 Gounod piece served as the theme, moves across each page of this neo-noir masterpiece. Grab a bottle of Merlot, and settle in to accompany Anna Fox on her nightmare journey, a journey confined, almost in its entirety, within the walls of her New York City home. Anna suffers from agoraphobia and has carefully arranged her housebound existence around her many medications, including bottles of wine and classic thriller films, as she keeps in contact with her husband and daughter, nurtures fellow agoraphobes in an online support group, plays virtual chess, Skypes French lessons, and maintains close surveillance of her neighbors. Safe from the world outside. Then her cocoon begins to unravel when she witnesses a murder in the house across the way. Sound familiar? However, author Finn has carefully paced Anna's internal narrative and intricately woven interactions (real or imagined?) and added a diabolical dimension that makes this story even more intense than Hitchcock's Rear Window. And when the catalyst for Anna's condition is ultimately revealed, it is far more traumatic than a broken leg. An astounding debut from a truly talented writer, perfect for fans in search of more like Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train.--Jane Murphy

HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Scheduled for publication in 35 languages and with a film already in development at Fox 2000 with Scott Rudin producing, this could be the first novel that climbs highest on this year's bestseller lists.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Murphy, Jane. "The Woman in the Window." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2017, p. 33. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A515383011/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7fc4d679. Accessed 16 Feb. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A515383011

The Woman in the Window
Publishers Weekly. 264.45 (Nov. 6, 2017): p60.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Woman in the Window

A.J. Finn. Morrow, $26.99 (448p) ISBN 978-006-267841-6

Child psychologist Anna Fox, the unreliable narrator of Finn's gripping first novel, lives out one of the classic films that she loves so well--Hitchcock's Rear Window. In this modern update, the agoraphobic Anna hasn't left her Manhattan townhouse in more than 11 months. When she's not observing the neighbors and photographing them with her digital camera, she's watching movies, playing chess, and counseling other agoraphobics via an online forum. Then her obsession with the new family across the park begins to take over. When Anna witnesses a stabbing in their house,

no one believes what she saw is real--and it's entirely possible that Anna shouldn't believe it herself. The secrets of Anna's past and the uncertain present are revealed slowly in genuinely surprising twists. And, while the language is at times too clever for its own good, readers will eagerly turn the pages to see how it all turns out. This highly anticipated debut has already received endorsements from such notables as Gillian Flynn and Louise Penny. Agent: Jennifer Joel, ICM Partners. (Jan.)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Woman in the Window." Publishers Weekly, 6 Nov. 2017, p. 60. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A514056588/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=35ff8407. Accessed 16 Feb. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A514056588

Book World: 'Woman in the Window' is a richly enjoyable tale of love, loss and madness
Patrick Anderson
The Washington Post. (Dec. 18, 2017): News:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Patrick Anderson

The Woman in the Window

By A. J. Finn

Morrow. 448 pp. $26.99

---

Most of the hundreds of first novels published each year sink like stones into a vast, cold ocean of indifference. A lucky handful receive a more favorable welcome. A.J. Finn's "The Woman in the Window" is among these fortunate few.

Even before its publication, movie rights were sold as well as foreign rights in multiple countries. Novels such as this, for which publishers have high hopes, are often dreadful potboilers. But if "The Woman in the Window" achieves success, it will be entirely deserved. It's a beautifully written, brilliantly plotted, richly enjoyable tale of love, loss and madness.

The title character, Anna Fox, is 38 and lives alone in a costly house in uptown Manhattan. We soon learn why she is so often peering out her window. She is agoraphobic and has not left home in nearly a year, but she delights in spying on her neighbors. Otherwise, Anna drinks a great deal of wine, mostly merlot, and watches countless black-and-white movie classics - "Gaslight," "Rebecca," "Strangers on a Train" and "Spellbound" are among her favorites.

Anna's husband has left her and taken their 8-year-old daughter with him. She talks to them by phone and vainly begs him to return. She's a child psychologist and still advises a few patients by email, but mostly she is alone with her wine, her movies and her cat. She also has a tenant, a handsome carpenter who lives in her basement. His presence injects a bit of "will they or won't they?" excitement into the story, but mostly she is content to spy on her neighbors.

Then, Ethan Russell, a boy of 16 who lives across the street, arrives bearing a gift from his mother. He is a good-looking, friendly lad: "He looks like a boy I once knew, once kissed - summer camp in Maine, a quarter century ago. I like him." Anna meets Ethan's parents, Paul and Jane, and Finn's plot kicks in.

The Russells are a troubled family. Ethan hints that his father is violent toward his wife and son. Anna uses her binoculars to learn more, and one day sees what she believes is an act of violence. She calls the police, who investigate and find no problem. They think Anna's wine consumption - two or three bottles a day - along with the many prescription drugs she consumes, have impaired her judgment. (Anna cherishes George Bernard Shaw's quip that alcohol is the "anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.") She continues to spy on the Russells, and dark deeds soon unfold.

As the plot seizes us, the prose caresses us. Anna recalls "Central Park, swans with their question-mark necks, high noon beyond the lacy elms." A woman "walks west, toward the avenue, the crown of her head a halo in the sunset." Thinking of a man she fears, "I shudder, wade deeper into my wineglass." She mourns that "yesterday had faded like a flower." And tells us, "Now the night has my heart in its claws. It's squeezing. I'll burst. I'm going to burst." Anna is a mess, but in her way she's wonderful.

Although Finn's plot must not be revealed, it's fair to say that his characters are rarely who or what they first appear to be. And that his story ends with a series of mind-boggling surprises. "The Woman in the Window" is first-rate entertainment that is finally a moving portrait of a woman fighting to preserve her sanity.

After finishing the novel, I wanted to know more about the author, A.J. Finn. It turns out Finn is pseudonym of Daniel Mallory, an executive editor with none other than the novel's publisher, William Morrow. In an autobiographical statement, Mallory writes that he has for years struggled with depression. It is an experience, he writes, that "informs, in part, my debut novel and its traumatized heroine."

With "The Woman in the Window" he has not only captured, sympathetically, the interior life of a depressed person, but also written a riveting thriller that will keep you guessing to the very last sentence.

---

Anderson writes regularly about thrillers and mysteries for The Washington Post.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Anderson, Patrick. "Book World: 'Woman in the Window' is a richly enjoyable tale of love, loss and madness." Washington Post, 18 Dec. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A519300375/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e77e7085. Accessed 16 Feb. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A519300375

Here, a Pinch of Hitchcock. There, a Sprinkle of Christie
Janet Maslin
The New York Times. (Jan. 4, 2018): Arts and Entertainment: pC6(L).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
Full Text:
The rocket fuel propelling ''The Woman in the Window,'' the first stratosphere-ready mystery of 2018, is expertise. Its author is billed as A. J. Finn, perhaps to leave open the possibility in readers' minds that this entry in the ''Gone Girl''/''The Girl on the Train'' sweepstakes was written by a woman, as most have been.

But its author is Dan Mallory, a longtime editor of mystery fiction. He is well versed in the tricks of the trade; he credits James Patterson as a helpful influence, particularly when it comes to short chapters. Mallory has edited recent ''Agatha Christie'' novels, but Christie never wrote an action scene packed with special effects just right for the movie version.

Mallory also clearly knows a lot about the more diabolical elements in Hitchcock movies. And he hasn't been shy, as Finn, about plugging them into his plot. ''The Woman in the Window'' starts out with a ''Rear Window'' setup: Anna Fox spies on her neighbors, looking from her gentrified Harlem townhouse into theirs. She is housebound (agoraphobia) but thinks she witnesses a crime. And now for a dose of ''The Girl on the Train'': Anna is a whopping drunk who also takes many prescription drugs, none of which should be mixed with alcohol. Dear other books with unreliable narrators: This one will see you and raise you.

All of this is very familiar, to the point where ''The Woman in the Window'' starts off feeling ordinary. It reads too much like another knockoff while the author sets up his very basic story elements. (At heart, this is a locked-room mystery in the great Christie tradition.) We need a rundown of who the neighbors are, especially the Russells, the family Anna spies on most avidly. We need to know about Anna's past life as a child psychiatrist, and about the husband and daughter who have abandoned her in the house. We need to raise eyebrows about the terse, hunky tenant in the basement.

We don't need a lot of flaunting of the author's cineaste credentials, but we get it anyway. This will work better later, when the book intercuts movie dialogue from the DVDs Anna watches with what is actually happening in her real world. There are shades of Hitchcock's ''Shadow of a Doubt,'' ''Vertigo,'' ''Spellbound,'' ''Suspicion'' and, of course, George Cukor's ''Gaslight,'' which has an enormous influence on the whole book (and has influenced many of its predecessors). But despite the value of ''show, don't tell'' for any writer, this author loves using examples to a fault. At one point, after Anna has dutifully invoked ''Gaslight,'' the book also throws in: ''Because it was no dream. ('This is no dream! This is really happening!' -- Mia Farrow, Rosemary's Baby.)''

Once the book gets going, it excels at planting misconceptions everywhere. You cannot trust anything you read. Even Anna can be made to doubt her own actions and memories, and she has absolutely no allies. Everyone on the street thinks she is peculiar, and that's the best-case scenario. When she deals with the police -- an inevitable interaction in this genre -- they happen to notice that she has stockpiled enough wine and prescription drugs to sedate an army. There's no chance they will ever believe anything she says as the danger level rises.

A book that's as devious as this novel will delight anyone who's been disappointed too often. (Case in point: those who were hooked by Paula Hawkins's ''The Girl on the Train'' but then suffered through her ''Into the Water.'') And ''The Woman in the Window'' sneaks in its zenith of trickery into an effortless early scene. Anna makes a disastrous effort to go beyond her front door and meets someone she's eager to know. The two of them spend a wonderful, confessional evening back in the house, playing chess and getting loaded. This all goes down so smoothly that its consequences come as a complete shock. And there's a superb snowbound horror story buried deep inside this novel's many layers.

How well does it all hold up, once Finn's cards have been fully played? Pretty well, but there are problems. An enormous surprise meant to arrive more than two-thirds of the way through the book was guessable even by me -- a terrible guesser -- almost from the start. One character has huge credibility problems. And the writing is serviceable, sometimes bordering on strange. ''My robe is smeared across the floor like a skid mark'' offers Anna, as well as ''thoughts tumble-drying in my brain.'' She really does need to get out of the house more, if only to shake off those domestic turns of phrase.

For hard-core aficionados of classic logical mysteries, this book includes some special delights. Its nods to contemporary tastes are offset by things like a reference to ''The Thinking Machine,'' the nickname of Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen, a fictional amateur detective created by Jacques Futrelle. Van Dusen was beloved in his time, but that time was so long ago that Futrelle died on the Titanic. Finn knows commerce but he also knows the classics, old and new. He truly aspires to write in their tradition.

THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOWBy A. J. Finn427 pages. William Morrow. $26.99.

CAPTION(S):

PHOTOS (PHOTOGRAPH BY HOPE BROOKS)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Maslin, Janet. "Here, a Pinch of Hitchcock. There, a Sprinkle of Christie." New York Times, 4 Jan. 2018, p. C6(L). General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A521259919/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=054e9fb6. Accessed 16 Feb. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A521259919

Next year's 'Gone Girl'? Perhaps. 'The Woman in the Window' lives up to the hype
Patrick Anderson
Washingtonpost.com. (Dec. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Washington Post
Full Text:
Byline: Patrick Anderson

Most of the hundreds of first novels published each year sink like stones into a vast, cold ocean of indifference. A lucky handful receive a more favorable welcome. A.J. Finn's "The Woman in the Window" is among these fortunate few.

Even before its publication, movie rights were sold as well as foreign rights in multiple countries. Novels such as this, for which publishers have high hopes, are often dreadful potboilers. But if "The Woman in the Window" achieves success, it will be entirely deserved. It's a beautifully written, brilliantly plotted, richly enjoyable tale of love, loss and madness.

The title character, Anna Fox, is 38 and lives alone in a costly house in uptown Manhattan. We soon learn why she is so often peering out her window. She is agoraphobic and has not left home in nearly a year, but she delights in spying on her neighbors. Otherwise, Anna drinks a great deal of wine, mostly merlot, and watches countless black-and-white movie classics -- "Gaslight," "Rebecca," "Strangers on a Train" and "Spellbound" are among her favorites.

Anna's husband has left her and taken their 8-year-old daughter with him. She talks to them by phone and vainly begs him to return. She's a child psychologist and still advises a few patients by email, but mostly she is alone with her wine, her movies and her cat. She also has a tenant, a handsome carpenter who lives in her basement. His presence injects a bit of "will they or won't they?" excitement into the story, but mostly she is content to spy on her neighbors.

Then, Ethan Russell, a boy of 16 who lives across the street, arrives bearing a gift from his mother. He is a good-looking, friendly lad: "He looks like a boy I once knew, once kissed -- summer camp in Maine, a quarter century ago. I like him." Anna meets Ethan's parents, Paul and Jane, and Finn's plot kicks in.

The Russells are a troubled family. Ethan hints that his father is violent toward his wife and son. Anna uses her binoculars to learn more, and one day sees what she believes is an act of violence. She calls the police, who investigate and find no problem. They think Anna's wine consumption -- two or three bottles a day -- along with the many prescription drugs she consumes, have impaired her judgment. (Anna cherishes George Bernard Shaw's quip that alcohol is the "anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.") She continues to spy on the Russells, and dark deeds soon unfold.

As the plot seizes us, the prose caresses us. Anna recalls "Central Park, swans with their -question-mark necks, high noon beyond the lacy elms." A woman "walks west, toward the avenue, the crown of her head a halo in the sunset." Thinking of a man she fears, "I shudder, wade deeper into my wineglass." She mourns that "yesterday had faded like a flower." And tells us, "Now the night has my heart in its claws. It's squeezing. I'll burst. I'm going to burst." Anna is a mess, but in her way she's wonderful.

Although Finn's plot must not be revealed, it's fair to say that his characters are rarely who or what they first appear to be. And that his story ends with a series of mind-boggling surprises. "The Woman in the Window" is first-rate entertainment that is finally a moving portrait of a woman fighting to preserve her sanity.

After finishing the novel, I wanted to know more about the author, A.J. Finn. It turns out Finn is pseudonym of Daniel Mallory, an executive editor with none other than the novel's publisher, William Morrow. In an autobiographical statement, Mallory writes that he has for years struggled with depression. It is an experience, he writes, that "informs, in part, my debut novel and its traumatized heroine."

With "The Woman in the Window" he has not only captured, sympathetically, the interior life of a depressed person, but also written a riveting thriller that will keep you guessing to the very last sentence.

Patrick Andersonwrites regularly about thrillers and mysteries for The Washington Post.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Anderson, Patrick. "Next year's 'Gone Girl'? Perhaps. 'The Woman in the Window' lives up to the hype." Washingtonpost.com, 15 Dec. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A519232809/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=36de05ce. Accessed 16 Feb. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A519232809

"Finn, A.J.: THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Nov. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A512028698/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=751c8be4. Accessed 16 Feb. 2018. Murphy, Jane. "The Woman in the Window." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2017, p. 33. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A515383011/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7fc4d679. Accessed 16 Feb. 2018. "The Woman in the Window." Publishers Weekly, 6 Nov. 2017, p. 60. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A514056588/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=35ff8407. Accessed 16 Feb. 2018. Anderson, Patrick. "Book World: 'Woman in the Window' is a richly enjoyable tale of love, loss and madness." Washington Post, 18 Dec. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A519300375/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e77e7085. Accessed 16 Feb. 2018. Maslin, Janet. "Here, a Pinch of Hitchcock. There, a Sprinkle of Christie." New York Times, 4 Jan. 2018, p. C6(L). General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A521259919/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=054e9fb6. Accessed 16 Feb. 2018. Anderson, Patrick. "Next year's 'Gone Girl'? Perhaps. 'The Woman in the Window' lives up to the hype." Washingtonpost.com, 15 Dec. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A519232809/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=36de05ce. Accessed 16 Feb. 2018.

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