The art of suspense narrative is born from a kind of osmosis between the character and the environment. The good writer of thrillers manages that ability to lead us from side to side of the membrane that filters us from the protagonist's particular perspective to a threatening, looming environment ..., in which everything indicates that something serious is going to happen, halfway through between curiosity and fear.
In this novel AJ Finn emerges as a great thriller writer. A new name to keep in mind. A young columnist for major American newspapers who, as he already did Joel dicker, brings new records of freshness and originality to a genre always in need of new voices to rediscover psychological tension as a rich entertainment narrative. (Be careful, I always insist that "entertainment" is not pejorative. El Quijote it was one of the first great adventure novels and therefore entertainment, without going any further).
This novel La mujer en la venta, whose title already evokes a classic symbol of the genre (cinematographic classicism to which it resorts to a certain extent as a whole), invites us to live in the same New York home as Anna Fox. A woman secluded among her four walls and also locked in his past that he drinks to forget or to try to remember in his alcohol delusions.
Until the Russells appear in his life ...
The one that seems an exemplary family happens to occupy the house opposite. Anna observes them with that curiosity of someone who contemplates with melancholy the happiness of others. Until the ideal prospect falls apart.
Anna sees, or thinks she has seen (alcohol is not a good friend of the objective facts on which to report to the authority) a particular and sinister family event. The Russells then cease to compose a beautiful picture to acquire an absolutely dark, atrocious tint.
Now Anna is alone. Too late for anyone to listen. Too late to escape her own home that has long since trapped her.
And what's worse ... In almost all likelihood the Russells know that Anna saw something.
Finding out to what extent Anna's weakness and isolation can make her the perfect victim or if she can finally break out of her confinement, order her mind, and get some proof that she's not completely insane, becomes the foundation of a suffocating, haunting tale. and absolutely stunning reading ...
You can now buy the novel The woman at the window, AJ Finn's great bestseller, here: