A. J. Finn

Daniel Mallory (born 1979) is an American editor and author who writes under the name A. J. Finn. His 2018 novel The Woman in the Window debuted at number one on the New York Times Best Seller list and has been adapted into a feature film. Mallory came to attention in 2019 for lying extensively about his past in order to excuse personal shortcomings and illegitimately further his literary work and career.

Early life and education

Mallory moved with his family to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he attended Charlotte Latin School. At Duke University, he majored in English and acted.

Career

Mallory worked for several years in London at Sphere Books, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. He wrote The Woman in the Window, his first novel, while living in New York and working as a vice president and executive editor at publisher William Morrow and Company. It debuted at number one on the New York Times Best Seller list and has been adapted into a feature film starring Amy Adams and Gary Oldman, set for release in 2019.

In February 2019, an article in The New Yorker accused Mallory of fabricating numerous aspects of his life and career, including having earned a doctorate from the University of Oxford, having suffered from cancer and a brain tumor, having lost his mother to cancer, having lost his brother to suicide, and having borrowed heavily from the 1995 thriller film Copycat, without attribution, for his debut novel. Mallory subsequently released a statement in which he admitted that his mother had survived her cancer and that his brother was also still alive. While Mallory has attributed his deceptive behavior to his diagnosis of bipolar II disorder, a psychiatrist interviewed in the aforementioned article noted that one "cannot attribute to that diagnosis delusions, amnesia, or 'chronic lying for secondary gain, or to get attention.'"