Look NO FURTHER
THIS GRIPPING TALE OF A WATCHFUL NEIGHBOUR WILL SATISFY THRILLER FANS EVERYWHERE
For some reason, the entire time I was reading new thriller The Woman in the Window, I assumed its author A.J. Finn must be female.
Maybe the fact that it’s centred on a female character and is emotionally layered put me wrong – although there’s no reason a man shouldn’t write books like that!
Anyway, it’s a cracker, an homage to the classic Hitchcock film Rear Window that had me practically sitting on my hands, I was so desperate to turn to the last page.
Anna Fox lives alone and is suffering from agoraphobia, leaving her virtually trapped inside her New York home. She passes her time by drinking too much wine, binge-watching old movies and staring out the window at her neighbours. As they cook meals, read books and cheat on their husbands, Anna looks on.
When a new family, the Russells, move in, they make overtures of friendship. Their teenage son Ethan brings over a gift and his mother spends an evening playing chess with her. So when Anna hears a loud scream coming from the Russell house, she’s worried.
Later, Ethan seems tearful and scared, which concerns Anna, a former child psychologist. Then comes the moment all that spying results in Anna witnessing a terrible crime.
The trouble is, Anna can’t even prove what she saw ever took place, never mind get to the bottom of it. The reader discovers she hasn’t been entirely honest about her own past and begins to wonder how reliable a narrator she is. Was she drunk? Is she crazy? Was she lying to attract attention? Or is she in danger?
Filled with tension and foreboding, with short, sharp chapters you’ll want to race through, this is great but not flawless. There’s a big twist even I saw coming and it’s so long, the pace is bound to flag now and then. But The Woman in the Window has already taken out the number-one spot on the New York Times’ bestseller list and people are talking about it as this year’s The Girl on the Train, so if you love thrillers, you’re going to want to read it.