It’s quite an accomplishment to write a psychological thriller these days. We’re so sophisticated, so jaded by edgy crime in fiction and movies, not to mention real life, that we’re suspicious when we’re told a new book‘s come along that’s a nail-biting page turner. Cynics that we are, we also tend to think that best-seller suspense tales must be contrived. But what debut novelist A. J. Finn does with “The Woman in the Window” is remarkable. He’s created a breathless, stunning twist-and-turn plot that cleverly relies on familiar scenarios, most of the Hitchcock kind, and builds the Hitchcock references into his own story. His narrator, Dr. Anna Fox, is an agoraphobic shut-in Rear Window, Gone Girl, Girl on a Train thirty-something. An intelligent woman, a psychologist who’s had a breakdown, she’s separated from her husband and young daughter, though she talks to them regularly, and medicates herself. A lot – with Merlot and pills. Together. She passes time watching – and critiquing –
It’s quite an accomplishment to write a psychological thriller these days. We’re so sophisticated, so jaded by edgy crime in fiction and movies, not to mention real life, that we’re suspicious when we’re told a new book‘s come along that’s a nail-biting page turner. Cynics that we are, we also tend to think that best-seller suspense tales must be contrived. But what debut novelist A. J. Finn does with “The Woman in the Window” is remarkable. He’s created a breathless, stunning twist-and-turn