The Woman in the Window

A. J. Finn / HarperCollins / $30

There’s a major buzz in the publishing hive around this assured psychological thriller. In what would be every aspiring writer’s dream, A. J. Finn’s debut novel is to be released in an astonishing 36 languages, while 20th Century Fox secured the movie rights way before it hit the shelves. Agoraphobic Anna Fox lives alone in New York, consuming wine and prescription pharmaceuticals as her dietary staples. She stays in touch with the outside world via internet chat rooms and by spying on her neighbours in the houses opposite through her Nikon camera’s powerful zoom lens. Then, one evening, she witnesses what appears to be a murder and the scary outside world can no longer be avoided. “Hitchcockian” is the most commonly used descriptive in reviews of this book and, yes, it does rely on the premise employed by the director in his 1954 film, Rear Window (itself based on a 1942 short story). Given that the main character is obsessed with old black-and-white movies – several Hitchcock classics prominent among them – it would be a fair assumption that this is not an unintentional channelling by Finn. But this serpentine and suspenseful story is way more than a Rear Window redux.