A.J. Finn

The Woman in the Window sold enormously in 2018, an agoraphobic woman watching her neighbours through a camera lens, with Hitchcock references stacked high.

The name is a pen name for Dan Mallory, a publishing editor. In 2019 the New Yorker published a long investigation reporting that he had claimed to colleagues over many years that he had brain cancer, that his mother had died of cancer and that his brother had died, none of which was true, and that details of his academic record did not hold up.

Mallory responded citing bipolar II disorder. The reporting has not been retracted. It belongs next to the book rather than tucked away from it.