A. J. Finn

Mallory was born in New York and moved with his family to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he attended Charlotte Latin School.[9] He went on to attend Duke University, where he majored in English[5] and acted.[8] He studied at Oxford University during his junior year and returned to Oxford after college for graduate work.[8]

Before becoming a novelist, Mallory worked in publishing in New York and London for several years, including at Little, Brown and Company and William Morrow and Company, a division of HarperCollins.[5] He is represented by Jennifer Joel of CAA in the United States and Felicity Blunt of Curtis Brown in the United Kingdom.[10][11]

Mallory wrote The Woman in the Window, his first novel, in 2015 while living in New York.[12] The novel debuted in January 2018 at number one on the New York Times Best Seller list.[5][13] The novel was subsequently adapted into a feature film directed by Joe Wright with a screenplay by Tracy Letts.

Mallory's much-anticipated second novel, End of Story, will be released in February 2024.[6] It has been described as a thriller set in San Francisco about a young woman writing the biography of a celebrated crime writer.[7][8]

Since the success of The Woman in the Window, Mallory has been an in-demand speaker at literary festivals, including Iceland Noir,[14][15] Hamptons Whodunit,[16] Sharjah International Book Fair,[17] Jaipur Literature Festival,[18] Christchurch,[19] and others.

The Woman in the Window follows the life of Dr. Anna Fox who suffers from agoraphobia and lives a reclusive life at her large home in New York City, where she one day witnesses a murder across the street. The novel deals with themes of loneliness, isolation, guilt, grief, and resilience. In a review in the New Yorker, Joyce Carrol Oates called it "superior" and "highly successful."[20] The Globe and Mail called it "an intelligent novel of psychological suspense."[21] Janet Maslin in the New York Times said, "A book that's as devious as this novel will delight anyone who's been disappointed too often... For hard-core aficionados of classic logical mysteries, this book includes some special delights."[22][23] The book was shortlisted for the 2019 British Book Awards in the "Crime & Thriller" category. See Woman in the Window (novel).

A feature film starring Amy Adams, Gary Oldman, Anthony Mackie, Fred Hechinger, Wyatt Russell, Brian Tyree Henry, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Julianne Moore, and directed by Joe Wright, with a screenplay by Tracy Letts was adapted from the book. The film was originally set for a theatrical release on May 15, 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic was sold to Netflix, which began streaming it on May 14, 2021.[24][25][26] Time called it a "coolly tasteful psychological thriller."[27] The Hollywood Reporter described the film as a "neo-Gothic diversion with a strong central performance" whose "homebound protagonist has become that much more understandable to audiences."[28]

End of Story (2024)

End of Story, A.J. Finn's second novel, is slated for release on February 20, 2024.[29][30] Set in San Francisco, it is a thriller about a young woman writing the biography of a celebrated crime writer.[31]

According to publisher HarperCollins, End of Story is "part Knives Out, part Agatha Christie . . . yet utterly unlike anything you've ever read."[32] The cover art, released in July 2023, features the tag line "the past isn't gone, it's just waiting."[29]

A.J. Finn has cited classic film noir and suspense fiction as influences.[33][34] He has shared that The Woman in the Window takes cues from Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) and has been influenced by genre classics such as Gas Light and Gone Girl.[35][36][37] According to IMDb, the plot of the Woman in the Window weaves in references to 52 movie classics. Finn's favorite classic authors include Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Josephine Tey, Edmund Crispin, and Patricia Highsmith.[7] Some of his contemporary influences include Andrea Camilleri, Gillian Flynn, Carl Hiaasen, and Fred Vargas because their "crime novels provide an experience beyond mere thrills" and "explore something bigger ... whether that's an exploration of mental health, personal traumas, or larger social issues."[7][38]

Reviewers have praised the character of Anna in The Woman in the Window as a female protagonist who is not preoccupied with a love interest or relationship.[20][39] Rather, "all her complexity and intensity has nothing to do with an unfaithful spouse or a romantic rejection," and "her challenges and obstacles are entirely her own."[40] A.J. Finn has said that he aims to "craft smart, shapely sentences, much as Gillian Flynn and Tana French do, so that readers feel they're experiencing so-called 'literary suspense.'"[33]

In February 2019, an article in The New Yorker reported on the success of The Woman in the Window and alleged that Mallory had been "an unreliable narrator" about some of his personal biography, including covering his mental illness during his 20s by claiming to have had cancer.[41][42] Mallory's psychiatrist disclosed that Mallory sometimes suffered from "somatic complaints, fears, and preoccupations" due to his bipolar depression.[41] Karin Slaughter, a bestselling author who worked with Mallory in his role as an editor at William Morrow, described the article as a "hit piece."[43] Irish author Carlo Gébler criticized it for its "extraordinary amount of animus" toward Mallory.[44][45][46]

In 2019, the New York Times investigated and dismissed plagiarism rumors due to plot similarities between The Woman in the Window and another psychological thriller, Sarah A. Denzil's Saving April.[47] The Times reviewed original outlines of The Woman in the Window and concluded that the similar plot points "were all included in outlines for The Woman in the Window that Mr. Mallory sent to his literary agent at ICM in the fall of 2015, before Ms. Denzil began writing Saving April."[47] The Times reported that the detailed outlines it reviewed were dated September 20, 2015 and October 4, 2015, and that Denzil had not started writing Saving April until October 2015.[47] The Washington Post also reported that "there's no real suggestion of plagiarism" in the case of The Woman in the Window.[48] The trade publication Publishers Lunch reached the same conclusion.[49]

• Finn, A. J. (January 2018). The Woman in the Window (First ed.). New York, NY: William Morrow and Company. ISBN 9780062678416. OCLC 1293226856.[50][44][21]

• Official website