A. J. Finn

Mallory was born in New York City and moved with his family to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he attended Charlotte Latin School. He went on to attend Duke University, where he majored in English and acted. He studied at the University of Oxford during his junior year and returned to Oxford after college for graduate work, completing a master's degree. ==Career==

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. The novel debuted in January 2018 at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.The Woman in the Window follows the life of Dr. Anna Fox, who has agoraphobia and lives a reclusive life at her large home in New York City, where she one day witnesses a murder at the house across a park from hers. 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" and that it holds up "pretty well, but there are problems" with writing that "is serviceable, sometimes bordering on strange." The novel was subsequently adapted into a feature film directed by Joe Wright with a screenplay by Tracy Letts. 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. End of Story Finn's second novel was published by HarperCollins on February 20, 2024 (United States) and February 29, 2024 (United Kingdom). Set in San Francisco, it is a thriller about a young woman writing the biography of a celebrated crime writer. Style and influences A. J. Finn has cited classic film noir and suspense fiction as influences. 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 Gaslight and Gone Girl. ==Allegations of lying==

In February 2019, an article in The New Yorker on The Woman in the Window alleged that Mallory had been "an unreliable narrator" about some of his personal biography, including falsely claiming to have had cancer and misrepresenting his academic credentials, amongst other things. For instance, the article describes a series of emails supposedly authored by Mallory's brother, describing Mallory undergoing a seven-hour spine surgery to remove a tumor and suffering severe cardiac arrest. Mallory then returned to work, largely unchanged, within several weeks. Mallory's psychiatrist disclosed that Mallory sometimes suffered from "somatic complaints, fears, and preoccupations" due to his bipolar depression. Author Karin Slaughter, who worked with Mallory at William Morrow, noted that "he was extremely professional and he was really one of the best advocates I could have had. He wrote fantastic copy, he was great with jacketing. He really understood the business" and said The New Yorker article "felt like a hit piece". ==Allegations==

In 2019, The New York Times investigated plagiarism rumors due to what it described as "numerous, and detailed" plot similarities and "nearly identical plot twists in the final act" between The Woman in the Window and another psychological thriller, Sarah A. Denzil's Saving April. Saving April was released in March 2016 and The Woman in the Window was released in January 2018. Five days after the article's publication, The Times revised their story with exonerating information. They reviewed outlines of The Woman in the Window, and stated that crucial "plot points were all included in outlines for The Woman in the Window that Mr. Mallory sent to Jennifer Joel, a literary agent at ICM, in the fall of 2015, before Ms Denzil began writing Saving April." The story also quoted Harvard Law School's intellectual property expert Rebecca Tushnet who explained that there are many "well-worn tropes in thrillers," and Stuart Karle of Columbia Journalism School who stated that "great fiction builds on prior works in terms of both language and sense of place." In addition, the director of 1995 film Copycat, Jon Amiel, also noted similarities from The Woman in the Window to his own movie. He told The New Yorker this was "not actionable, but certainly worth noting", adding: "One would have hoped that the author might have noted it himself". ==Personal life==

Mallory is openly gay. He dedicated his first novel to his then-boyfriend, George. ==Bibliography==