The title of this book almost stopped me from picking it up. The spate of books with the word ‘girl’ in the title has struck me as a marketing ploy from publishers who are trying to ride the wave of success of such books such as The Girl on the Train, Gone Girl and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This book, admittedly, doesn’t have the word ‘girl’ in the title, but ‘woman’ is close enough for me to be suspicious. Recommendations from some of my favourite crime and thriller writers, however, prompted me to give it a crack.
Anna Fox has agoraphobia, a condition that prevents her from going beyond her front door without experiencing an overwhelming sense of panic. She has been suffering with it for almost a year. Trapped alone inside her home, she uses a camera with a telephoto lens to watch going-ons in the street. Using the camera she intrudes on her neighbours, whose curtains are open. She sees families sharing dinner at the table, children doing homework at their desks and people arriving home to welcoming smiles.
A new family moves in across the street. Mum, dad and a son. She relates to them instantly, thinking of her own husband and daughter when they were living together, a happy family of three.
One night Anna hears a scream. She grabs her camera and homes in on the family’s residence. What she sees terrifies her.
I enjoyed Gone Girl but did’t love it. But I really enjoyed The Woman in the Window and its Hitchcockian sense of suspense, and the references to the films of the great director. The story took a little while to get going, but it wasn’t long before I hooked, and by halfway I couldn’t stop.
Reviewed by Rowena Morcom
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Mallory writes under the name A J Finn
and is the author of The Woman in the Window, the #1 internationally-bestselling phenomenon published in more than 40 languages and adapted for the screen as a film starring Amy Adams, Gary Oldman, and Julianne Moore.
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